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OFF DUTY 


OFF DUTY 

A DOZEN YARNS FOR 
SOLDIERS AND SAILORS 


COMPILED BY 

WILHELMINA HARPER 

Assistant Librarian, Camp Library. Naval 
Training Station, Pelham Bay Park, N. Y. 



NEW YORK 
THE CENTURY CO. 
1919 





Copyright, 1919, by 
The Centuby Co. 

Published, August, 1919 


JUl. 28 ISI9 


l.SO 


©CI.A530366 


*»•» t 



TO 

MY BROTHER 

LIEUTENANT FRANCIS HARPER 

































































FOREWORD 


In my work here at Pelham Bay Camp with our 
wounded from abroad, with our sick boys who did not 
get “ over there/’ and with the well but often lonely 
men, who frequent our library, I have discovered a 
distinct need for some collection of the best stories, 
especially adapted to the “ genus homo.” To meet 
this want, I have prepared this compilation for our 
soldiers and sailors, and incidentally for all to read 
who will. 

Work with our American youth is most inspiring 
because of his open mind, his courage, and his great 
appreciation of any service rendered him. This fact 
I have learned through becoming acquainted with the 
brave lads on the hospital cots at Pelham, who have 
needed help in whiling away the long hours of wait¬ 
ing. 

In all camps there are many men not acquainted 
with books. My aim has been to introduce them to 
some of our best writers, knowing that friendship and 
liking would soon follow. The work has been a pleas¬ 
ant one, made doubly so because of the willing co-op- 


FOREWORD 


eration given me by the distinguished authors whose 
stories are contained herein; and by the equally gener¬ 
ous response which the various publishers have made 
to my requests. It was not done for me, but for the 
purpose of the compilation. To authors and pub¬ 
lishers I hereby express my gratitude. 

W. H. 

April, 1919 . 


CONTENTS 


Keeping Up With Lizzie . 
The Tide Takes a Hand . 
The Gay Old Dog .... 

Ole Skjarsen’s First Touch¬ 
down . 

The Outlaw. 

Naza ! Naza ! Naza ! 

A Case of Metaphantasmia 
The Outcasts of Poker Flat 
The Handbook of Hymen . 
Jack and the King . 
Billy’s Tenderfoot . . . 

The Nightingale and the 
Rose. 


page 

Irving Bacheller . . 3 

Rex Beach . ... 29 

Edna Ferber .... 63 

George Fitch . . . 105 

Hamlin Garland . . .137 

Zane Grey . . . .211 

W. D. Howells . . . 225 

Bret Harte .... 245 
O. Henry . . . . . 267 

Seumas MacManus . . 289 


Stewart Edward White 303 
Oscar Wilde .... 327 














KEEPING UP WITH LIZZIE 


By Irving Bacheller 








OFF DUTY 


I 

KEEPING UP WITH LIZZIE 
(In part) 


“OlAM HENSHAW’S girl had graduated an’ gone 
fcj abroad with her mother. One Sunday ’bout a 
year later, Sam flew up to the door o’ my house in 
his automobile. He lit on the sidewalk an’ struggled 
up the steps with two hundred an’ forty-seven pounds 
o’ meat on him. He walked like a man carryin’ a 
barrel o’ pork. He acted as if he was glad to see me 
an’ the big arm-chair on the piaz’. 

“‘What’s the news?’ I asked. 

“ ‘ Lizzie an’ her mother got back this mornin’,’ he 
gasped. ‘ They’ve been six months in Europe. Liz¬ 
zie is in love with it. She’s hobnobbed with kings 
an’ queens. She talks art beautiful. I wish you’d 
come over an’ hear her hold a conversation. It’s 
wonderful. She’s goin’ to be a great addition to this 

From “Keeping Up with Lizzie,” copyright, 1911, by Harper & 
Brothers. Used by special permission of the author. 

3 


4 


KEEPING UP WITH LIZZIE 


community. She’s got me faded an’ on the run. I 
ran down to the store for a few minutes this mornin’, 
an’ when I got back she says to me: 

“ ‘ “ Father, you always smell o’ ham an’ mustard. 
Have you been in that disgusting store ? Go an’ take 
a bahth at once.” That’s what she called it — a 
“ bahth.” Talks just like the English people — she’s 
been among ’em so long. Get into my car an’ I ’ll 
take ye over an’ fetch ye back.’ 

“ Sam regarded his humiliation with pride an’ joy. 
At last Lizzie had convinced him that her education 
had paid. My curiosity was excited. I got in an’ 
we flew over to his house. Sam yelled up the stair¬ 
way kind o’ joyful as we come in, an’ his wife an¬ 
swered at the top o’ the stairs an’ says: 

“ * Mr. Henshaw, I wish you would n’t shout in this 
house like a boy calling the cows.’ 

“ I guess she did n’t know I was there. Sam ran 
up-stairs an’ back, an’ then we turned into that splen¬ 
did parlor o’ his an’ set down. Purty soon Liz an’ 
her mother swung in an’ smiled very pleasant an’ 
shook hands an’ asked how was my family, etc., an’ 
went right on talkin’. I saw they did n’t ask for the 
purpose of gettin’ information. Liz was dressed to 
kill an’ purty as a picture — cheeks red as a rooster’s 
comb an’ waist like a hornet’s. The cover off her 


KEEPING UP WITH LIZZIE 


5 

show-case, an’ there was a diamond sunburst in the 
middle of it, an’ the jewels were surrounded by 
charms to which I am not wholly insensible even 
now. 

“ * I wanted ye to tell Mr. Potter about yer travels,’ 
says Sam. 

“ Lizzie smiled an’ looked out o’ the window a min¬ 
ute an’ fetched a sigh an’ struck out, lookin’ like 
Deacon Bristow the day he give ten dollars to the 
church. She told about the cities an’ the folks an’ 
the weather in that queer, English way she had o’ 
talkin’. 

44 4 Tell how ye hobnobbed with the Queen o’ Italy,’ 
Sam says. 

“ 4 Oh, father! Hobnobbed! ’ says she. 4 Anybody 
would think that she and I had manicured each other’s 
hands. She only spoke a few words of Italian and 
looked very gracious an’ beautiful an’ complimented 
my color.’ 

44 Then she lay back in her chair, kind o’ weary, an’ 
Sam asked me how was business — just to fill in the 
gap, I guess. Liz woke up an’ showed how far she’d 
got ahead in the race. 

44 4 Business! ’ says she, with animation. 4 That’s 
why I have n’t any patience with American men. 
They never sit down for ten minutes without talking 


6 


KEEPING UP WITH LIZZIE 


business. Their souls are steeped in commercialism. 
Don’t you see how absurd it is, father? There are 
plenty of lovely things to talk about.’ 

“ Sam looked guilty, an’ I felt sorry for him. It 
had cost heavy to educate his girl up to a p’int where 
she could give him so much advice an’ information. 
The result was natural. She was irritated by the 
large cubic capacity — the length, breadth and thick¬ 
ness of his ignorance and unrefinement; he was dazed 
by the length, breadth, an’ thickness of her learning an’ 
her charm. He did n’t say a word. He bowed his 
head before this pretty, perfumed casket of erudition. 

“ ‘ You like Europe,’ I says. 

“ * I love it,’ says she. * It’s the only place to live. 
There one finds so much of the beautiful in art and 
music and so many cultivated people.’ 

“ Lizzie was a handsome girl, an’ had more sense 
than any o’ the others that tried to keep up with her. 
After all, she was Sam’s fault, an’ Sam was a sin con¬ 
ceived an’ committed by his wife, as ye might say. 
She had made him what he was. 

“ 4 Have you see Dan Pettigrew lately ? ’ Lizzie 
asked. 

“ ‘ Yes,’ I says. ‘ Dan is goin’ to be a farmer.’ 

“ ‘ A farmer! ’ says she, an’ covered her face with 
her handkerchief an’ shook with merriment. 


KEEPING UP WITH LIZZIE 


7 


Yes,’ I says. ‘Dan has come down out o’ the 
air. He’s abandoned folly. He wants to do some¬ 
thing to help along.’ 

“ ‘ Yes, of course,’ says Lizzie, in a lofty manner. 
‘Dan is really an excellent boy — isn’t he?’ 

“‘Yes, an’ he’s livin’ within his means — that’s 
the first mile-stone in the road to success,’ I says. 
‘ I’m goin’ buy him a thousand acres o’ land, an’ one 
o’ these days he’ll own it an’ as much more. You 
wait. He ’ll have a hundred men in his employ an’ 
flocks an’ herds an’ a market of his own in New York. 
He ’ll control prices in this county, an’ they ’re goin’ 
down. He ’ll be a force in the State.’ 

“ They were all sitting up. The faces o’ the Lady 
Henshaw an’ her daughter turned red. 

“‘I’m very glad to hear it, I’m sure,’ said her 
Ladyship. 

“ I was n’t so sure o’ that as she was, an’ there, 
for me, was the milk in the cocoanut. I was joyful. 

“ ‘ Why, it’s perfectly lovely! ’ says Lizzie, as she 
fetched her pretty hands together in her lap. 

* ‘ Yes, you want to cultivate Dan,’ I says. ‘ He’s 
a man to be reckoned with.’ 

“ ‘ Oh, indeed! ’ says her Ladyship. 

“ ‘ Yes, indeed! ’ I says, ‘ an’ the girls are all after 
him.’ 


8 


KEEPING UP WITH LIZZIE 


“ I just guessed that. I knew it was unscrupulous, 
but livin’ here in this atmosphere does affect the morals 
even of a lawyer. Lizzie grew red in the face. 

“ * He could marry one o’ the Four Hundred if he 
wanted to,’ I says. ‘ The other evening he was seen 
in the big red tourin’-car o’ the Van Alstynes. What 
do you think o’ that ? ’ 

“ Now that was true, but the chauffeur had been a 
college friend of Dan’s, an’ I did n’t mention that. 

“ Lizzie had a dreamy smile on her face. 

“ ‘ Why, it’s wonderful!’ says she. ‘I didn’t 
know he’d improved so.’ 

“ 4 1 hear that his mother is doing her own work,’ 
says the Lady Henshaw, with a forced smile. 

“ * Yes, think of it,’ I says. ‘ The woman is earn¬ 
ing her daily bread — actually helpin’ her husband. 
Did you ever hear o’ such a thing! I’ll have to 
scratch ’em off my list. It’s too uncommon. It 
ain’t respectable.’ 

“ Her ladyship began to suspect me an’ retreated 
with her chin in the air. She’d had enough. 

“ I thought that would do an’ drew out o’ the game. 
Lizzie looked confident. She seemed to have some¬ 
thing up her sleeve besides that lovely arm o’ hers. 

“ I went home, an’ two days later Sam looked me 
up again. Then the secret came out o’ the bag. 


KEEPING UP WITH LIZZIE 


9 


He’d heard that I had some money in the savings- 
bank over at Bridgeport payin’ me only three and a 
half per cent, an’ he wanted to borrow it an’ pay me 
six per cent. His generosity surprised me. It was 
not like Sam. 

“ ‘ What’s the matter with you? ’ I asked. * Is it 
possible that your profits have all gone into gasoline 
an’ rubber an’ silk an’ education an’ hardwood finish 
an’ human fat?’ 

“ ‘ Well, it costs so much to live,’ he says, ‘ an’ the 
wholesalers have kept liftin’ the prices on me. Now 
there’s the meat trust — their prices are up thirty-five 
per cent.’ 

“ ‘ Of course,’ I says, * the directors have to have 
their luxuries. You taxed us for yer new house an’ 
yer automobile an’ yer daughter’s education, an* 
they ’re taxin’ you for their steam-yachts an’ private 
cars an’ racin’ stables. You can’t expect to do all the 
taxin’. The wholesalers learnt about the profits that 
you an’ others like ye was makin’, an’ they concluded 
that they needed a part of ’em. Of course they had 
to have their luxuries, an’ they ’re taxin’ you — they 
could n’t afford to have ’em if they did n’t. Don’t 
complain.’ 

“ * I ’ll come out all right,’ he says. ‘ I’m goin’ to 
raise my whole schedule fifteen per cent.’ 


IO KEEPING UP WITH LIZZIE 

“ 4 The people won’t stand it — they can’t,’ says I. 
4 You ’ll be drownin’ the miller. They ’ll leave you.’ 

44 4 It won’t do ’em any good,’ says he. 4 Bill an’ 
Eph will make their prices agree with mine.’ 

“ 4 Folks will go back to the land, as I have,’ says I. 

44 4 They don’t know enough,’ says Sam. 4 Farmin’ 
is a lost art here in the East. You take my word for 
it — they ’ll pay our prices — they ’ll have to — an’ 
the rich folks, they don’t worry about prices. I pay 
a commission to every steward an’ butler in this neigh¬ 
borhood.’ 

44 4 1 won’t help you,’ says I. 4 It’s wicked. You 
ought to have saved your money.’ 

44 4 In a year from now I ’ll have money to burn,’ 
he says. 4 For one thing, my daughter’s education is 
finished, an’ that has cost heavy.’ 

44 4 How much would it cost to unlearn it? ’ I asked. 
4 That’s goin’ to cost more than it did to get it, I’m 
’fraid. In my opinion the first thing to do with her 
is to uneducate her.’ 

44 That was like a red-hot iron to Sam. It kind o’ 
het him up. 

44 4 Why, sir, you don’t appreciate her,’ says he. 
4 That girl is far above us all here in Pointview. 
She’s a queen.’ 


KEEPING UP WITH LIZZIE 


ii 


“ * Well, Sam,’ I says, ‘ if there ’s anything you 
don’t need just now it’s a queen. If I were you I 
wouldn’t graft that kind o’ fruit on the grocery-tree. 
Hams an’ coronets don’t flourish on the same bush. 
They have a different kind of a bouquet. They don’t 
harmonize. Then, Sam, what do you want of a girl 
that’s far above ye? Is it any comfort to you to be 
despised in your own home ? ’ 

“ ' Mr. Potter, I have n’t educated her for my own 
home or for this community, but for higher things/ 
says Sam. 

“ 4 You hairy old ass! The first you know/ I says, 
‘ they ’ll have your skin off an’ layin’ on the front 
piaz’ for a door-mat.’ 

“ Sam started for the open air. I hated to be 
ha’sh with him, but he needed some education himself, 
an’ it took a beetle an’ wedge to open his mind for it. 
He lifted his chin so high that the fat swelled out on 
the back of his neck an’ unbuttoned his collar. Then 
he turned an’ said: * My daughter is too good for 

this town, an’ I don’t intend that she shall stay here. 
She has been asked to marry a man o’ fortune in the 
old country.’ 

“ 4 So I surmise, an’ I suppose you find that the 
price o’ husbands has gone up,’ I says. 


12 


KEEPING UP WITH LIZZIE 


“ Sam did n’t answer me. 

“ ‘ They want you to settle some money on the girl 
— don’t they ? ’ I asked. 

“ * My wife says it’s the custom in the old coun¬ 
try,’ says Sam. 

“ * Suppose he ain’t worth the price ? ’ 

“ * They say he’s a splendid fellow,’ says Sam. 

“ * You let me investigate him,’ I says, * an’ if he’s 
really worth the price I ’ll help ye to pay it.’ 

“ Sam said that was fair, an’ thanked me for the 
offer, an’ gave me the young man’s address. He was 
a Russian by the name of Alexander Rolanoff, an’ 
Sam insisted that he belonged to a very old family of 
large means an’ noble blood, an’ said that the young 
man would be in Pointview that summer. I wrote 
to the mayor of the city in which he was said to live, 
but got no answer. 

“ Alexander came. He was a costly an’ beautiful 
young man, about thirty years old, with red cheeks an’ 
curly hair an’ polished finger-nails, an’ wrote poetry. 
Sometimes ye meet a man that excites yer worst sus¬ 
picions. Your right hand no sooner lets go o’ his 
than it slides down into your pocket to see if anything 
has happened; or maybe you take the arm o’ yer wife 
or yer daughter an’ walk away. Aleck leaned a little 
in both directions. But, sir, Sam did n’t care to know 


KEEPING UP WITH LIZZIE 


13 

my opinion of him. Never said another word to me 
on the subject, but came again to ask about the money. 

Look here, Sam,’ I says. 4 You tell Lizzie that 
I want to have a talk with her at four o’clock in this 
office. If she really wants to buy this man, I ’ll see 
what can be done about it.’ 

“ ‘ All right, you talk with her,’ says he, an’ went 
out. 

“ In a few minutes Dan showed up. 

“ ‘ Have you seen Lizzie ? ’ says I. 

“ 4 Not to speak to her,’ says Dan. ‘ Looks fine, 
doesn’t she?’ 

“ 4 Beautiful,’ I says. * How is Marie Benson? ’ 

“ ‘ Oh, the second time I went to see her she was 
trying to keep up with Lizzie,’ says he. She’s 
changed her gait. Was going to New York after a 
lot o’ new frills. I suppose she thought that I wanted 
a grand lady. That’s the trouble with all the girls 
here. A man might as well marry the real thing as 
an imitation. I wish Lizzie would get down off her 
high horse.’ 

“ 4 She’s goin’ to swap him for one with still longer 
legs,’ I says. ‘ Lizzie is engaged to a gentleman o’ 
fortune in the old country.’ 

44 Dan’s face began to stretch out long as if it was 
made of injy-rubber. 


14 


KEEPING UP WITH LIZZIE 


“ * It’s too bad,’ says he. ‘ Lizzie is a good-hearted 
girl, if she is spoilt/ 

“'Fine girl!’ I says. ‘An’, Dan, I was in hopes 
that she would discover her own folly before it was 
too late. But she saw that others had begun to push 
her in the race an’ that she had to let out another link 
or fall behind.' 

“ ‘ Well, I wish her happiness/ says Dan, with a 
sigh. 

“ ‘ Go an' tell her so,' I says. ‘ Show her that you 
have some care as to whether she lives or dies.' 

“ I could see that his feelin’s had been honed ’til 
they were sharp as a razor. 

“ ‘ I’ve seen that fellow/ he says, * an’ he ’ll never 
marry Lizzie if I can prevent it. I hate the looks of 
him. I shall improve the first opportunity I have to 
insult him.’ 

“ ‘ That might be impossible,’ I suggested. 

“‘ But I ’ll make the effort,’ says Dan. 

“As an insulter I wouldn’t wonder if Dan had 
large capacity when properly stirred up. 

“ ‘ Better let him alone. I have lines out that will 
bring information. Be patient.’ 

“ Dan rose and said he would see me soon, an’ left 
with a rather stern look on his face. 


KEEPING UP WITH LIZZIE 


15 

“ Lizzie was on hand at the hour appointed. We 
sat down here all by ourselves. 

Lizzie,’ I says, ‘ why in the world did you go to 
Europe for a husband ? It’s a slight to Pointview — 
a discouragement of home industry.’ 

There was nobody here that seemed to want 
me,’ she says, blushin’ very sweet. 

“ She had dropped her princess manner an’ seemed 
to be ready for straight talk. 

“'If that’s so, Lizzie, it’s your fault,’ I says. 

“ ‘ I don’t understand you,’ says she. 

“ ‘ Why, my dear child, it’s this way,’ I says. 
4 Your mother an’ father have meant well, but they’ve 
been foolish. They’ve educated you for a million¬ 
airess, an’ all that’s lackin’ is the millions. You over¬ 
awed the boys here in Pointview. They thought that 
you felt above ’em, whether you did or not; an’ the 
boys on Fifth Avenue were glad to play with you, 
but they did n’t care to marry you. I say it kindly, 
Lizzie, an’ I’m a friend o’ yer father’s, an’ you can 
afford to let me say what I mean. Those young fel¬ 
lows wanted the millions as well as the millionairess. 
One of our boys fell in love with ye an’ tried to keep 
up, but your pace was too hot for him. His father 
got in trouble, an’ the boy had to drop out. Every 
well-born girl in the village entered the race with ye. 


i6 KEEPING UP WITH LIZZIE 

An era of extravagance set in that threatened the 
solvency, the honor, o’ this sober old community. 
Their fathers had to borrow money to keep agoin’. 
They worked overtime, they importuned their credit¬ 
ors, they wallowed in low finance while their daughters 
revelled in the higher walks o’ life an’ sang in differ¬ 
ent languages. Even your father — I tell you in con¬ 
fidence, for I suppose he would n’t have the courage 
to do it — is in financial difficulties. Now, Lizzie, I 
want to be kind to you, for I believe you ’re a good 
girl at heart, but you ought to know that all this is 
what your accomplishments have accomplished.’ 

“ She rose an’ walked across the room, with trem¬ 
bling lips. She had seized her parachute an’ jumped 
from her balloon and was slowly approachin’ the 
earth. I kept her cornin’. ‘ These clothes an’ jewels 
that you wear, Lizzie — these silks an’ laces, these 
sunbursts an’ solitaires — don’t seem to harmonize with 
your father’s desire to borrow money. Pardon me, 
but I can’t make ’em look honest. They are not paid 
for — or if they are they are paid for with other men’s 
money. They seem to accuse you. They’d accuse 
me if I did n’t speak out plain to ye.’ 

“ All of a sudden Lizzie dropped into a chair an’ 
began to cry. She had lit safely on the ground. 

“ It made me feel like a murderer, but it had to be. 


KEEPING UP WITH LIZZIE 


17 

Poor girl! I wanted to pick her up like a baby an’ 
kiss her. It was n’t that I loved Lizzie less but Rome 
more. She was n't to blame. Every spoilt woman 
stands for a fool-man. Most o’ them need — not a 
master — but a frank counsellor. I locked the door. 
She grew calm an’ leaned on my table, her face cov¬ 
ered with her hands. My clock shouted the seconds 
in the silence. Not a word was said for two or three 
minutes. 

“ 4 1 have been brutal/ I says, by-an’-by. * Forgive 
me/ 

“ * Mr. Potter/ she says, ‘ you’ve done me a great 
kindness. I ’ll never forget it. What shall I do ? ” 

“ ‘ Well, for one thing/ says I, ‘ go back to your old 
simplicity an’ live within your means/ 

“ ‘ I ’ll do it,’ she says; ‘but — I — I supposed 
my father was rich. Oh, I wish we could have had 
this talk before! ’ 

“ f Did you know that Dan Pettigrew was in love 
with you ? ’ I put it straight from the shoulder. 
‘ He would n’t dare to tell ye, but you ought to know 
it. You are regarded as a kind of a queen here, an’ 
it’s customary for queens to be approached by am¬ 
bassadors.’ 

“ Her face lighted up. 

1 


18 KEEPING UP WITH LIZZIE 

“ * In love with me?’ she whispered. ‘Why, Mr. 
Potter, I never dreamed of such a thing. Are you 
sure? How do you know? I thought he felt above 
me.’ 

“ ‘ An’ he thought you felt above him,’ I says. 

“ ‘ How absurd! how unfortunate! ’ she whispered. 
‘ I could n’t marry him now if he asked me. This 
thing has gone too far. I would n’t treat any man 
that way.’ 

“ * You are engaged to Alexander, are you? ’ I says. 

“ ‘ Well, there is a sort of understanding, and I think 
we are to be married if — if —’ 

“ She paused, and tears came to her eyes again. 

“ * You are thinking o’ the money,’ says I. 

" ‘ I am thinking o’ the money,’ says she. ‘ It has 
been promised to him. He will expect it.’ 

“ ‘ Do you think he is an honest man ? Will he 
treat you well ? ’ 

“ ‘ I suppose so.’ 

“ ‘ Then let me talk with him. Perhaps he would 
take you without anything to boot.’ 

“ ‘ Please don’t propose that,’ says she. ‘ I think 
he’s getting the worst of it now. Mr. Potter, would 
you lend me the money? I ask it because I don’t want 
the family to be disgraced or Mr. Rolanoff to be badly 
treated. He is to invest the money in my name in a 


KEEPING UP WITH LIZZIE 


19 

very promising venture. He says he can double it 
within three months/ 

“ It would have been easy for me to laugh, but I 
did n’t. Lizzie’s attitude in the whole matter pleased 
me. I saw that her heart was sound. I promised to 
have a talk with her father and see her again. I 
looked into his affairs carefully and put him on a new 
financial basis with a loan of fifteen thousand dol¬ 
lars. 

“ One day he came around to my office with Alex¬ 
ander an’ wanted me to draw up a contract between 
him an’ the young man. It was a rather crude propo¬ 
sition, an’ I laughed, an’ Aleck sat with a bored smile 
on his face. 

“ ‘ Oh, if he’s good enough for your daughter/ I 
said, ‘ his word ought to be good enough for you.’ 

“ ‘ That’s all right,’ says Sam, ‘ but business is busi¬ 
ness. I want it down in black an’ white that the in¬ 
come from this money is to be paid to my daughter, 
and that neither o’ them shall make any further de¬ 
mand on me.’ 

“ Well, I drew that fool contract, an’, after it was 
signed, Sam delivered ten one-thousand-dollar bills to 
the young man, who was to become his son-in-law the 
following month with the assistance of a caterer and a 
florist and a string-band, all from New Haven. 


20 


KEEPING UP WITH LIZZIE 


44 Within half an hour Dan Pettigrew came roarin' 
up in front o’ my office in the big red automobile of his 
father’s. In a minute he came in to see me. He out 
with his business soon as he lit in a chair. 

44 * I ’ve learned that this man Rolanoff is a scoun¬ 
drel,’ says he. 

44 4 A scoundrel! ’ says I. 

44 4 Of purest ray serene,’ says he. 

44 I put a few questions, but he’d nothing in the way 
o’ proof to offer — it was only the statement of a 
newspaper. 

44 4 Is that all you know against him ? ’ I asked. 

44 4 He won’t fight,’ says Dan. 4 1’ve tried him — 
begged him to fight.’ 

44 4 Well, I’ve got better evidence than you have,’ I 
says. 4 It came a few minutes before you did.’ 

44 1 showed him a cablegram from a London bar¬ 
rister that said: 

44 4 Inquiry complete. The man is pure adventurer, 
character nil.’ 

44 4 We must act immediately,’ says Dan. 

44 4 1 have telephoned all over the village for Sam,’ I 
says. 4 They say he’s out in his car with Aleck an’ 
Lizzie. I asked them to send him here as soon as he 
returns.’ 

44 4 They ’re down on the Post Road. I met ’em on my 


KEEPING UP WITH LIZZIE 


21 


way here/ says Dan. ‘ We can overtake that car easy.' 

“ Well, the wedding-day was approaching an' Aleck 
had the money, an’ the thought occurred to me that he 
might give ’em the slip somewhere on the road an’ get 
away with it. I left word in the store that if Sam got 
back before I saw him he was to wait with Aleck in 
my office until I returned, an’ off we started like a 
baseball on its way from the box to the catcher. 

“ An officer on his motor-cycle overhauled us on the 
Post Road. He knew me. 

“ ‘ It’s a case o’ sickness,’ I says, * an’ we ’re after 
Sam Henshaw.’ 

“ * He’s gone down the road an’ has n’t come back 
yet,’ says the officer. 

“ I passed him a ten-dollar bill. 

“ ‘ Keep within sight of us,’ I says. ‘ We may need 
you any minute.’ 

“ He nodded and smiled, an’ away we went. 

“ * I’m wonderin’ how we ’re agoin’ to get the 
money,’ I says, havin’ told Dan about it. 

“ ‘ I’ll take it away from him,’ says Dan. 

“ * That would n’t do,’ says I. 

Why not?’ 

u ‘ Why not? ’ says I. * You would n’t want to be 
arrested for highway robbery. Then, too, we must 
think o’ Lizzie. Poor girl! It’s agoin’ to be hard 


22 


KEEPING UP WITH LIZZIE 


on her, anyhow. I ’ll try a bluff. It’s probable that 
he’s worked this game before. If so, we can rob 
him without violence an’ let him go.' 

“ Dan grew joyful as we sped along. 

“ * Lizzie is mine,’ he says. ‘ She would n’t marry 
him now.’ 

“ He told me how fond they had been of each other 
until they got accomplishments an’ began to put up 
the price o’ themselves. He said that in their own 
estimation they had riz in value like beef an’ ham, an’ 
he confessed how foolish he had been. We were 
excited an’ movin’ fast. 

“ ‘ Something ’ll happen soon,’ he says. 

“An’ it did, within ten minutes from date. We 
could see a blue car half a mile ahead. 

“ I ’ll go by that ol’ freight-car o’ the Henshaws’,* 
says Dan. ‘ They ’ll take after me, for Sam is vain 
of his car. We can halt them in that narrow cut on 
the hill beyond the Byron River.’ 

“ We had rounded the turn at Chesterville, when 
we saw the Henshaw car just ahead of us, with Aleck 
at the wheel an’ Lizzie beside him an’ Sam on the 
back seat. I saw the peril in the situation. 

“ The long rivalry between the houses of Henshaw 
an’ Pettigrew, reinforced by that of the young men, 
was nearing its climax. 


KEEPING UP WITH LIZZIE 


23 

“ * See me go by that old soap-box o’ the HenshawsV 
says Dan, as he pulled out to pass ’em. 

“ Then Dan an’ Aleck began a duel with automo¬ 
biles. Each had a forty-horse-power engine in his 
hands, with which he was resolved to humble the 
other. Dan knew that he was goin’ to bring down 
the price o’ Alecks an’ Henshaws. First we got 
ihead; then they scraped by us, crumpling our fender on 
the nigh side. Lizzie an’ I lost our hats in the scrim¬ 
mage. We gathered speed an’ ripped off a section o’ 
their bulwarks, an’ roared along neck an’ neck with 
’em. The broken fenders rattled like drums in a bat¬ 
tle. A hen flew up an’ hit me in the face, an’ came 
nigh unhorsin’ me. I hung on. It seemed as if Fate 
was tryin’ to halt us, but our horse-power was too 
high. A dog went under us. It began to rain a 
little. We were a length ahead at the turn by the 
Byron River. We swung for the bridge an’ skidded 
an’ struck a telephone pole, an’ I went right on over 
the stone fence an’ the clay bank an’ lit on my head 
in the water. Dan Pettigrew lit beside me. Then 
came Lizzie an’ Sam — they fairly rained into the 
river. I looked up to see if Aleck was cornin’, but he 
was n’t. Sam, bein’ so heavy, had stopped quicker an’ 
hit in shallow water near the shore, but, as luck would 
have it, the bottom was soft an’ he had come down 


24 


KEEPING UP WITH LIZZIE 


feet foremost, an’ a broken leg an’ some bad bruises 
were all he could boast of. Lizzie was in hysterics, but 
seemed to be unhurt. Dan an’ I got ’em out on the 
shore, an’ left ’em cryin’ side by side, an’ scrambled 
up the bank to find Aleck. He had aimed too low an’ 
hit the wall, an’ was stunned, an’ apparently, for the 
time, dead as a herrin’ on the farther side of it. I re¬ 
moved the ten one-thousand bills from his person to 
prevent complications an’ tenderly laid him down. 
Then he came to very sudden. 

“ f Stop! ’ he murmured. ‘ You ’re robbin’ me.’ 

“ 4 Well, you begun it,’ I says. 4 Don’t judge me 
hastily. I’m a philanthropist. I’m goin’ to leave 
you yer liberty an’ a hundred dollars. You take it 
an’ get. If you ever return to Connecticut I ’ll arrest 
you at sight.’ 

“ I gave him the money an’ called the officer, who 
had just come up. A traveller in a large tourin’ car 
had halted near us. 

“ ‘ Put him into that car an’ take him to Chester- 
ville,’ I said. 

“ He limped to the car an’ left without a word. 

“ I returned to my friends an’ gently broke the 
news. 

“ Sam blubbered. 4 Education done it,’ says he, as 
he mournfully shook his head. 


KEEPING UP WITH LIZZIE 


25 

“ * Yes,’ I says. ‘ Education is responsible for a 
damned lot of ignorance/ 

“ ‘ An’ some foolishness,’ says Sam, as he scraped 
the mud out of his hair. ‘ Think of our goin’ like 
that. We ought to have known better/ 

“‘We knew better,’ I says, ‘ but we had to keep up 
with Lizzie.’ 

“ Sam turned toward Lizzie an’ moaned in a broken 
voice, ‘ I wish it had killed me.’ 

“ 4 Why 90? ’ I asked. 

“ ‘ It costs so much to live,’ Sam sobbed, in a half- 
hysterical way. 4 1’ve got an expensive family on 
my hands.’ 

“‘You needn’t be afraid o’ havin’ Lizzie on your 
hands,’ says Dan, who held the girl in his arms. 

“ ‘ What do you mean? ’ Sam inquired. 

“ She’s on my hands an’ she’s goin’ to stay there,’ 
says the young man. ‘I’m in love with Lizzie my¬ 
self. I’ve always been in love with Lizzie.’ 

“ ‘ Your confession is ill-timed,’ says Lizzie, as she 
pulled away an’ tried to smooth her hair. She be¬ 
gan to cry again, an’ added, between sobs: ‘ My heart 

is about broken, and I must go home and get help for 
my poor father.’ 

“ ‘ I ’ll attend to that,’ says Dan; ‘ but I warn you 
that I’m goin’ to offer a Pettigrew for a Henshaw 


26 KEEPING UP WITH LIZZIE 

even. If I had a million dollars I’d give it all to 
boot.’ 

“ Sam turned toward me, his face red as a beet. 

“ ‘ The money! * he shouted. ‘ Get it, quick!’ 

“ * Here it is! ’ I said, as I put the roll o’ bills in his 
hand. 

“ ‘ Did you take it off him ? 9 

“ ‘ I took it off him.’ 

41 ‘ Poor Aleck ! 9 he says, mournfully, as he counted 
the money. ‘ It’s kind o’ hard on him.’ 

“ Soon we halted a passin’ automobile an’ got Sam 
up the bank an’ over the wall. It was like movin’ a 
piano with somebody playin’ on it, but we managed 
to seat him on the front floor o’ the car, which took us 
all home. 

“ So the affair ended without disgrace to any one, 
if not without violence, and no one knows of the 
cablegram save the few persons directly concerned. 
But the price of Alecks took a big slump in Point- 
view. No han’some foreign gent could marry any 
one in.this village, unless it was a chambermaid in a 
hotel. 

“ That was the end of the first heat of the race with 
Lizzie in Pointview.” 


II 

THE TIDE TAKES A HAND 
By Rex Beach 












II 


THE TIDE TAKES A HAND 

T HE ship stole through the darkness with ex- 
tremest caution, feeling her way past bay and 
promontory. Around her was none of that phospho¬ 
rescent glow which lies above the open ocean, even 
on the darkest night, for the mountains ran down to 
the channel on either side. In places they overhung, 
and where they lay upturned against the dim sky it 
could be seen that they were mantled with heavy tim¬ 
ber. All day long the Nebraska had made her way 
through an endless succession of straits and sounds, 
now squeezing through an inlet so narrow that the 
somber spruce trees seemed to be within a short stone’s 
throw, again plowing across some open reach where 
the pulse of the north Pacific could be felt. Out 
through the openings to seaward stretched the rest¬ 
less ocean, on across uncounted leagues, to Saghalien 
and the rim of Russia’s prison-yard. 

Always near at hand was the deep green of the 

From “The Iron Trail, copyright, 1913, by Harper & Broth¬ 
ers. By special permission from the publishers. 

29 


THE TIDE TAKES A HAND 


30 

Canadian forests, denser, darker than a tropic jungle, 
for this was the land of “ plenty waters.” The hill¬ 
sides were carpeted knee-deep with moss, wet to sat¬ 
uration. Out of every gulch came a brawling stream 
whipped to milk-white frenzy; snow lay heavy upon 
the higher levels, while now and then from farther 
inland peered a glacier, like some dead monster 
crushed between the granite peaks. There were vil¬ 
lages, too, and fishing-stations, and mines and quar¬ 
ries. These burst suddenly upon the view, then slipped 
past with dreamlike swiftness. Other ships swung 
into sight, rushed by, and were swallowed up in the 
labyrinthine maze astern. 

Those passengers of the Nebraska who had never 
before traversed the “ Inside Passage ” were loud in 
the praises of its picturesqueness, while those to whom 
the route was familiar seemed to find an ever fresh 
fascination in its shifting scenes. 

Among the latter was Murray O’Neil. The whole 
north coast from Flattery to St. Elias was as well 
mapped in his mind as the face of an old friend, yet 
he was forever discovering new vistas, surprising pan¬ 
oramas, amazing variations of color and topography. 
The mysterious rifts and passageways that opened 
and closed as if to lure the ship astray, the trackless 
confusion of islets, the siren song of the waterfalls, 


THE TIDE TAKES A HAND 


3i 

the silent hills and glaciers and snow-soaked forests — 
all appealed to him strongly, for he was at heart a 
dreamer. 

Yet he did not forget that scenery such as this, 
lovely as it is by day, may be dangerous at night, for 
he knew the weakness of steel hulls. On some sides 
his experience and business training had made him 
sternly practical and prosaic. Ships aroused no man¬ 
ner of enthusiasm in him except as means to an end. 
Railroads had no glamour of romance in his eyes, for, 
having built a number of them, he had outlived all 
poetic notions regarding the “ Iron horse,” and once 
the rails were laid he was apt to lose interest in them. 
Nevertheless, he was almost poetic in his own quiet 
way, interweaving practical thoughts with fanciful 
visions, and he loved his dreams. He was dreaming 
now as he leaned upon the bridge rail of the Nebraska, 
peering into the gloom with watchful eyes. From 
somewhere to port came the occasional commands 
of the officer on watch, echoed instantly from the inky 
interior of the wheelhouse. Up overside rose the 
whisper of rushing waters; from underfoot came the 
rhythmic beat of the engines far below. O’Neil shook 
off his mood and began to wonder idly how long it 
would be before Captain Johnny would be ready for 
his “ nightcap.” 


32 


THE TIDE TAKES A HAND 


He always traveled with Johnny Brennan when he 
could manage it, for the two men were boon com¬ 
panions. O’Neil was wont to live in Johnny’s cabin, 
or on the bridge, and their nightly libation to friend¬ 
ship had come to be a matter of some ceremony. 

The ship’s master soon appeared from the shadows 
— a short, trim man with gray hair. 

“ Come,” he cried. “ It’s waiting for us.” 

O’Neil followed into Brennan’s luxurious, well-lit 
quarters, where on a mahogany sideboard was a tray 
holding decanter, siphon, and glasses, together with 
a bottle of ginger ale. The captain, after he had 
mixed a beverage for his passenger, opened the bottle 
for himself. They raised their glasses silently. 

“ Now that you ’re past the worst of it,” remarked 
O’Neil, “ I suppose you ’ll turn in. You ’re getting 
old for a hard run like this, Johnny.” 

Captain Brennan snorted. “ Old ? I’m a better 
man than you, yet. I’m a teetotaler, that’s why. I 
discovered long ago that salt water and whiskey don’t 
mix.” 

O’Neil stretched himself out in one of Brennan’s 
easy chairs. “ Really,” he said, “ I don’t understand 
why a ship carries a captain. Now of what earthly 
use to the line are you, for instance, except for your 
beauty, which, no doubt, has its value with the women? 


THE TIDE TAKES A HAND 


33 


I ’ll admit you preside with some grace at the best 
table in the dining-salon, but your officers know these 
channels as well as you do. They could make the 
run from Seattle to Juneau with their eyes shut.” 

“ Indeed, they could not; and neither could I.” 

“ Oh, well, of course I have no respect for you as 
a man, having seen you without your uniform.” 

The captain grinned in thorough enjoyment of this 
raillery. “ I ’ll say nothing at all of my seamanship,” 
he said, relapsing into the faintest of brogues, “ but 
there’s no denying that the master of a ship has many 
unpleasant and disgusting duties to perform. He has 
to amuse the prominent passengers who can’t amuse 
themselves, for one thing, and that takes tact and pa¬ 
tience. Why, some people make themselves at home 
on the bridge, in the chart-room, and even in my living- 
quarters, to say nothing of consuming my expensive 
wines, liquors, and cigars.” 

“ Meaning me? ” 

“I’m a brutal seafaring man, and you ’ll have to 
make allowances for my well-known brusqueness. 
Maybe I did mean you. But I ’ll say that next 
to you Curtis Gordon is the worst grafter I ever 
saw.” 

“You don’t like Gordon, do you?” O’Neil queried 
with a change of tone. 


34 


THE TIDE TAKES A HAND 


“ I do not! He went up with me again this spring, 
and he had had his widow with him, too.” 

“ His widow? ” 

“ You know who I mean — Mrs. Gerard. They 
say it’s her money he ’s using in his schemes. Per¬ 
haps it’s because of her that I don’t like him.” 

“ Ah-h! I see.” 

“ You don’t see, or you wouldn’t grin like an ape. 
I’m a married man, I ’ll have you know, and I’m still 
on good terms with Mrs. Brennan, thank God. But 
I don’t like men who use women’s money, and that’s 
just what our friend Gordon is doing. What money 
the widow did n’t put >up he’s grabbed from the 
schoolma’ams and servant-girls and society matrons 
in the East. What has he got to show them for 
it?” 

“ A railroad project, a copper-mine, some coal 
claims —” 

“ Bah! A menagerie of wildcats! ” 

“ You can’t prove that. What’s your reason for 
distrusting him ? ” 

“ Well, for one thing, he knows too much. Why, 
he knows everything, he does. Art, literature, poli¬ 
tics, law, finance, and draw poker have no secrets from 
him. He’s been everywhere — and back — twice; he 
speaks a dozen different languages. He out-argued 


THE TIDE TAKES A HAND 


35 


me on poultry-raising and I know more about that than 
any man living. He can handle a drill or a coach-and- 
four; he can tell all about the art of ancient Babylon; 
and he beat me playing cribbage, which shows that he 
ain’t on the level. He’s the best informed man out¬ 
side of a university, and he drinks tea of an afternoon 
— with his legs crossed and the saucer balanced on 
his heel. Now, it takes years of hard work for an 
honest man to make a success at one thing, but Gor¬ 
don never failed at anything. I ask you if a living 
authority on all the branches of human endeavor and 
a man who can beat me at * crib ’ does n’t make you 
suspicious.” 

“ Not at all, I’ve beaten you myself! ” 

“ I was sick,” said Captain Brennan. 

“ The man is brilliant and well educated and wealthy. 
It’s only natural that he should excite the jealousy of 
a weaker intellect.” 

Johnny opened his lips for an explosion, then 
changed his mind and agreed sourly. 

“ He’s got money, all right, and he knows how to 
spend it. He and his valet occupied three cabins on 
this ship. They say his quarters at Hope are pala¬ 
tial.” 

“ My dear grampus, the mere love of luxury does n’t 
argue that a person is dishonest.” 


36 


THE TIDE TAKES A HAND 


“ Would you let a hired man help you on with your 
underclothes? ” demanded the mariner. 

“ There’s nothing criminal about it.” 

“ Humph! Mrs. Gerard is different. She ’s all 
class! You don’t mind her having a maid and speak¬ 
ing French when she runs short of English. Her 
daughter is like her.” 

“ I have n’t seen Miss Gerard.” 

“ If you’d stir about the ship instead of wearing out 
my Morris chair you’d have that pleasure. She was 
on deck all morning.” Captain Brennan fell silent 
and poked with a stubby forefinger at the ice in his 
glass. 

“ Well, out with it! ” said O’Neil after a moment. 

“ I’d like to know the inside story of Curtis Gor¬ 
don and this girl’s mother.” 

“ Why bother your head about something that 
doesn’t concern you?” The speaker rose and began 
to pace the cabin floor, then, in an altered tone, in¬ 
quired, “ Tell me, are you going to land me and my 
horses at Kyak Bay?” 

“ That depends on the weather. It’s a rotten har¬ 
bor; you ’ll have to swim them ashore.” 

“ Suppose it should be rough ? ” 

“ Then we ’ll go on, and drop you there coming 
back. I don’t want to be caught on that shore with 


THE TIDE TAKES A HAND 


37 


a southerly wind, and that ’s the way it usually blows.” 

“ I can’t wait,” O’Neil declared. “ A week’s delay 
might ruin me. Rather than go on I’d swim ashore 
myself, without the horses.” 

“ I don’t make the weather at Kyak Bay. Satan 
himself does that. Twenty miles offshore it may be 
calm, and inside it may be blowing a gale. That’s 
due to the glaciers. Those ice-fields inland and the 
warm air from the Japanese Current offshore kick up 
some funny atmospheric pranks. It’s the worst spot 
on the coast and we ’ll lose a ship there some day. 
Why, the place is n’t properly charted, let alone 
buoyed.” 

“ That’s nothing unusual for this coast.” 

“ True for you. This is all a graveyard of ships 
and there’s been many a good master’s license lost 
because of half-baked laws from Washington. Think 
of a coast like this with almost no lights, no beacons 
nor buoys; and yet we ’re supposed to make time. It’s 
fine in clear weather, but in the dark we go by guess 
and by God. I ’ve stood the run longer than most of 
the skippers, but —” 

Even as Brennan spoke the Nebraska seemed to 
halt, to jerk backward under his feet. O’Neil, who 
was standing, flung out an arm to steady himself; the 
empty ginger ale bottle fell from the sideboard with 


THE TIDE TAKES A HAND 


38 

a thump. Loose articles hanging against the side 
walls swung to and fro; the heavy draperies over Cap¬ 
tain Johnny’s bed swayed. 

Brennan leaped from his chair; his ruddy face was 
mottled, his eyes were wide and horror-stricken. 

“ Damnation! ” he gasped. The cabin door crashed 
open ahead of him and he was on the bridge, with 
O’Neil at his heels. They saw the first officer cling¬ 
ing limply to the rail; from the pilot-house window 
came an excited burst of Norwegian, then out of the 
door rushed a quartermaster. 

Brennan cursed, and met the fellow with a blow 
which drove him sprawling back. 

“ Get in there, Swan,” he bellowed, “ and take your 
wheel.” 

“The tide swung her in!” exclaimed the mate. 
“The tide— My God!” 

“ Sweet Queen Anne! ” said Brennan, more quietly. 
“ You’ve ripped her belly out! ” 

“ It — was the tide,” chattered the officer. 

The steady, muffled beating of the machinery ceased, 
the ship seemed suddenly to lose her life, but it was 
plain that she was not aground, for she kept moving 
through the gloom. From down forward came ex¬ 
cited voices as the crew poured up out of the fore¬ 
castle. 


THE TIDE TAKES A HAND 


39 


Brennan leaped to the telegraph and signaled the 
engine-room. He was calm now, and his voice was 
sharp and steady. 

“ Go below, Mr. James, and find the extent of the 
damage,” he directed, and a moment later the hull 
began to throb once more to the thrust of the pro¬ 
peller. Inside the wheelhouse Swan had recovered 
from his panic and repeated the master’s orders me¬ 
chanically. 

The second and third officers arrived upon the 
bridge now, dressing as they came, and they were fol¬ 
lowed by the chief engineer. To them Johnny spoke, 
his words crackling like the sparks from a wireless. 
In an incredibly short time he had the situation in 
hand and turned to O’Neil, who had been a silent wit¬ 
ness of the scene. 

“ Glory be! ” exclaimed the captain. “ Most of our 
good passengers are asleep; the jar would scarcely 
wake them.” 

“ Tell me where and how I can help,” Murray of¬ 
fered. His first thought had been of the possible ef¬ 
fect of this catastrophe upon his plans, for time was 
pressing. As for danger, he had looked upon it so 
often and in so many forms that it had little power to 
stir him; but a shipwreck, which would halt his north¬ 
ward rush, was another matter. Whether the ship 


THE TIDE TAKES A HAND 


40 

sank or floated could make little difference, now that 
the damage had been done. She was crippled and 
would need assistance. His fellow-passengers, he 
knew, were safe enough. Fortunately there were not 
many of them — a scant two hundred, perhaps — and 
if worse came to worst there was room in the life¬ 
boats for all. But the Nebraska had no watertight 
bulkheads and the plight of his twenty horses between- 
decks filled him with alarm and pity. There were no 
life-boats for those poor dumb animals penned down 
yonder in the rushing waters. 

Brennan had stepped into the chart-room, but re¬ 
turned in a moment to say: 

“ There’s no place to beach her this side of Halibut 
Bay.” 

“ How far is that? ” 

“ Five or six miles.” 

“ You ’ll — have to beach her? ” 

“ I’m afraid so. She feels queer.” 

Up from the cabin deck came a handful of men 
passengers to inquire what had happened; behind them 
a woman began calling shrilly for her husband. 

“ We touched a rock,” the skipper explained briefly. 
“ Kindly go below and stop that squawking. There’s 
no danger.” 

There followed a harrowing wait of several min- 


THE TIDE TAKES A HAND 


4i 


utes; then James, the first officer, came to report. 
He had regained his nerve and spoke with swift pre¬ 
cision. 

“ She loosened three plates on her port quarter and 
she’s filling fast.” 

“ How long will she last? ” snapped Brennan. 

“ Not long, sir. Half an hour, perhaps.” 

The captain rang for full speed, and the decks began 
to strain as the engine increased its labor. “ Get your 
passengers out and stand by the boats,” he ordered. 
“ Take it easy and don’t alarm the women. Have 
them dress warmly, and don’t allow any crowding by 
the men. Mr. Tomlinson, you hold the steerage gang 
in check. Take your revolver with you.” He turned 
to his silent friend, in whose presence he seemed to 
feel a cheering sympathy. “ I knew it would come 
sooner or later, Murray,” he said. “ But — magnifi¬ 
cent mummies! To touch on a clear night with the 
sea like glass! ” He sighed dolefully. “ It ’ll be 
tough on my missus.” 

O’Neil laid a hand upon his shoulder. “ It was n’t 
your fault, and there will be room in the last boat for 
you. Understand ? ” Brennan hesitated, and the 
other continued, roughly: “ No nonsense, now! Don’t 
make a damned fool of yourself by sticking to the 
bridge. Promise?” 


42 


THE TIDE TAKES A HAND 


“ I promise.” 

“ Now what do you want me to do? ” 

“ Keep those dear passengers quiet. I ’ll run for 
Halibut Bay, where there ’s a sandy beach. If she 
won’t make it I ’ll turn her into the rocks. Tell ’em 
they won’t wet a foot if they keep their heads.” 

“ Good! I’ll be back to see that you behave your¬ 
self.” The speaker laughed lightly and descended to 
the deck, where he found an incipient panic. Stew¬ 
ards were pounding on stateroom doors, half-clad men 
were rushing about aimlessly, pallid faces peered forth 
from windows, and there was the sound of running 
feet, of slamming doors, of shrill, hysterical voices. 

O’Neil saw a waiter thumping lustily upon a door 
and heard him shout, hoarsely: 

“Everybody out! The ship is sinking!” As he 
turned away Murray seized him roughly by the arm 
and thrusting his face close to the other’s, said harshly: 

“ If you yell again like that I ’ll toss you overboard.” 

“ God help us, we ’re going—” 

O’Neil shook the fellow until his teeth rattled; his 
own countenance, ordinarily so quiet, was blazing. 

“ There’s no danger. Act like a man and don’t 
start a stampede.” 

The steward pulled himself together and answered 
in a calmer tone: 


THE TIDE TAKES A HAND 


43 


“ Very well, sir. I — I’m sorry, sir.” 

Murray O'Neil was known to most of the passen¬ 
gers, for his name had gone up and down the coast, 
and there were few places from San Francisco to 
Nome where his word did not carry weight. As he 
went among his fellow-travelers now, smiling, self- 
contained, unruffled, his presence had its effect. 
Women ceased their shrilling, men stopped their sense¬ 
less questions and listened to his directions with some 
comprehension. In a short time the passengers were 
marshaled upon the upper deck where the life-boats 
hung between their davits. Each little craft was in 
charge of its allotted crew, the electric lights continued 
to burn brightly, and the panic gradually wore itself 
out. Meanwhile the ship was running a desperate race 
with the sea, striving with every ounce of steam in her 
boilers to find a safe berth for her multilated body 
before the inrush of waters drowned her fires. That 
the race was close even the dullest understood, for the 
Nebraska was settling forward, and plowed into the 
night head down, like a thing maddened with pain. 
She was becoming unmanageable, too, and O’Neil 
thought with pity of that little iron-hearted skipper 
on the bridge who was fighting her furiously. There 
was little confusion, little talking upon the upper deck 
now; only a child whimpered or a woman sobbed hys- 


44 


THE TIDE TAKES A HAND 


terically. But down forward among the steerage pas¬ 
sengers the case was different. These were mainly 
Montenegrins, Polacks, or Slavs bound for the con¬ 
struction camps to the westward, and they surged from 
side to side like cattle, requiring Tomlinson’s best ef¬ 
forts to keep them from rushing aft. 

O’Neil had employed thousands of such men; in 
fact, many of these very fellows had cashed his time- 
checks and knew him by sight. He went forward 
among them, and his appearance proved instantly reas¬ 
suring. He found his two hostlers, and with their aid 
he soon reduced the mob to comparative order. 

But in spite of his confident bearing he felt a great 
uneasiness. The Nebraska seemed upon the point of 
diving; he judged she must be settling very fast, and 
wondered that the forward tilt did not lift her pro¬ 
peller out of the water. Fortunately, however, the 
surface of the sound was like a polished floor and 
there were no swells to submerge her. 

Over-side to starboard he could see the dim 
black outlines of mountains slipping past, but where 
lay Halibut Bay or what distance remained to be cov¬ 
ered he could but vaguely guess. 

In these circumstances the wait became almost un¬ 
bearable. The race seemed hours long, the miles 
stretched into leagues, and with every moment of sus- 


THE TIDE TAKES A HAND 


45 

pense the ship sank lower. The end came unexpect¬ 
edly. There was a sudden startled outcry as the Ne¬ 
braska struck for a second time that night. She rose 
slightly, rolled and bumped, grated briefly, then came 
to rest. 

Captain Brennan shouted from the bridge: 

“ Fill your life-boats, Mr. James, and lower away 
carefully.” 

A cheer rose from the huddled passengers. 

The boiler-room was still dry, it seemed, for the 
incandescent lights burned without a flicker, even after 
the grimy oilers and stokers had come pouring up on 
deck. 

O’Neil climbed to the bridge. “ Is this Halibut 
Bay?” he asked Captain Johnny. 

“ It is. But we ’re piled up on the reef outside. 
She may hold fast — I hope so, for there’s deep water 
astern, and if she slips off she ’ll go down.” 

“ I ’d like to save my horses,” said the younger man, 
wistfully. Through all the strain of the past half- 
hour or more his uppermost thought had been for them. 
But Brennan had no sympathy for such sentiments. 

“Hell’s bells!” he exclaimed. “Don’t talk of 
horses while we’ve got women and children aboard.” 
He hastened away to assist in transferring his passen¬ 


gers. 


4 6 


THE TIDE TAKES A HAND 


Instead of following, O’Neil turned and went below. 
He found that the water was knee-deep on the port 
side of the deck where his animals were quartered, 
which showed that the ship had listed heavily. He 
judged that she must<be much deeper by the head than 
he had imagined, and that her nose was crushed in 
among the rocks. Until she settled at the stern, 
therefore, the case was not quite hopeless. 

His appearance, the sound of his voice, were the 
signals for a chorus of eager whinnies and a great 
stamping of hoofs. Heads were thrust toward him 
from the stalls, alert ears were pricked forward, satin 
muzzles rubbed against him as he calmed their terror. 
This blind trust made the man’s throat tighten ach¬ 
ingly. He loved animals as he loved children, and 
above all he cared for horses. He understood them, 
he spoke their language as nearly as any human can 
be said to do so. Quivering muscles relaxed beneath 
his soothing palm; he called them by name and they 
answered with gently twitching lips against his cheek. 
Some of them even began to eat and switch their tails 
contentedly. 

He cursed aloud and made his way down the slop¬ 
ing deck to the square iron door, or port, through 
which he had loaded them. But he found that it was 
jammed, or held fast by the pressure outside, and after 


THE TIDE TAKES A HAND 47 

a few rrfoments’ work in water above his knees he 
climbed to the starboard side. Here the entrance was 
obstructed by a huge pile of baled hay and grain in 
sacks. It would be no easy task to clear it away, and 
he fell to work with desperate energy, for the ship was 
slowly changing her level. Her stern, which had been 
riding high, was filling; the sea stole in upon him 
silently. It crept up toward him until the horses, 
stabled on the lower side, were belly-deep in it. Their 
distress communicated itself to the others. O’Neil 
knew that his position might prove perilous if the 
hulk should slip backward off the reef, yet he con¬ 
tinued to toil, hurling heavy sacks behind him, bun¬ 
dling awkward bales out of the way, until his hands 
were bleeding and his muscles ached. He was per¬ 
spiring furiously; the commotion around him was hor¬ 
rible. Then abruptly the lights went out, leaving him 
in utter blackness; the fast fading yellow gleam was 
photographed briefly upon his retina. 

Tears mingled with the sweat that drained down his 
cheeks as he felt his way slowly out of the place, 
splashing, stumbling, groping uncertainly. A horse 
screamed in a loud, horribly human note, and he shud¬ 
dered. He was sobbing curses as he emerged into 
the cool open air on the forward deck. 

His eyes were accustomed to the darkness now, and 


48 THE TIDE TAKES A HAND 

he could see something of his surroundings. He noted 
numerous lights out on the placid bosom of the bay, 
evidently lanterns on the life-boats, and he heard dis¬ 
tant voices. He swept the moisture from his face; 
then with a start he realized his situation. He list¬ 
ened intently; his eyes roved back along the boat- 
deck ; there was no doubt about it — the ship was de¬ 
serted. Stepping to the rail, he observed how low the 
Nebraska lay and also that her bow was higher than 
her stern. From somewhere beneath his feet came a 
muffled grinding and a movement which told him that 
the ship was seeking a more comfortable berth. He 
recalled stories of explosions and of the boiling eddies 
which sometimes accompany sinking hulls. Turning, 
he scrambled up to the cabin-deck and ran swiftly to¬ 
ward his stateroom. 


II 

O’Neil felt for the little bracket-lamp on the wall of 
his stateroom and lit it. By its light he dragged a 
life-preserver from the rack overhead and slipped 
the -tapes about his shoulders, reflecting that Alaskan 
waters are disagreeably cold. Then he opened his 
traveling-bags and dumped their contents upon the 
white counterpane of his berth, selecting out of the con- 


THE TIDE TAKES A HAND 


49 

fusion certain documents and trinkets. The latter he 
thrust into his pockets as he found them, the former 
he wrapped in handkerchiefs before stowing them 
away. The ship had listed now so that it was difficult 
to maintain a footing; the lamp hung at a grotesque 
angle and certain articles had become dislodged from 
their resting places. From outside came the gentle 
lapping of waters, a gurgling and hissing as of air 
escaping through the decks. He could feel the ship 
strain. He acknowledged that it was not pleasant thus 
to be left alone on a sinking hulk, particularly on an 
ink-black night — 

All at once he whirled and faced the door with an 
exclamation of astonishment, for a voice had addressed 
him. 

There, clinging to the casing, stood a woman — a 
girl — evidently drawn out of the darkness by the 
light which streamed down across the sloping deck 
from his stateroom. Plainly she had but just awak¬ 
ened, for she was clothed in a silken nightrobe. She 
had flung a quilted dressing-gown of some sort over 
her shoulders and with one bare arm and hand strove 
to hold it in place. He saw that her pink feet were 
thrust into soft, heelless slippers — that her hair, black 
in this light, cascaded down to her waist, and that her 
eyes, which were very dark and very large, were fixed 


50 


THE TIDE TAKES A HAND 


upon him with a stare like that of a sleep-walker. 

“ It is so dark — so strange — so still! ” she mur¬ 
mured. “ What has happened ? ” 

“ God! Did n’t they waken you ? ” he cried in sharp 
surprise. 

“Is the ship — sinking?” Her odd bewilderment 
of voice and gaze puzzled him. 

He nodded. “ We struck a rock. The passengers 
have been taken off. We ’re the only ones left. In 
Heaven’s name where have you been?” 

“ I was asleep.” 

He shook his head in astonishment. “ How you 
failed to hear that hubbub —” 

“ I heard something, but I was ill. My head — I 
took something to ease the pain.” 

“ Ah! Medicine! It has n’t worn off yet, I see! 
You should n’t have taken it. Drugs are nothing but 
poison to young people. Now at my age there might 
be some excuse for resorting to them, but you —” He 
was talking to cover the panic of his thoughts, for his 
own predicament had been serious enough, and her 
presence rendered it doubly embarrassing. What in 
the world to do with her he scarcely knew. His lips 
were smiling, but his eyes were grave as they roved 
over the cabin and out into the blackness of the night. 

“ Are we going to drown? ” she asked, dully. 


THE TIDE TAKES A HAND 


5i 

“ Nonsense! ” He laughed in apparent amusement, 
showing his large strong teeth. 

She came closer, glancing behind her and shrinking 
from the oily waters which could be seen over the 
rail and which had stolen up nearly to the sill of the 
door. She steadied herself by laying hold of him 
uncertainly. Involuntarily he turned his eyes away, 
for he felt shame at profaning her with his gaze. She 
was very soft and white, a fragile thing utterly unfit to 
cope with the night air and the freezing waters of 
Halibut Bay. 

“ I ’m wretchedly afraid! ” she whispered through 
white lips. 

“ None of that,” he said, brusquely. “ I *11 see that 
nothing happens to you.” He slipped out of his life- 
preserver and adjusted it over her shoulders, first 
drawing her arms through the sleeves of her dressing- 
gown and knotting the cord snugly around her waist. 
“ Just as a matter of precaution!” he assured her. 
“ We may get wet. Can you swim? ” 

She shook her head. 

“ Never mind; I can.” He found another life¬ 
belt, fitted it to his own form, and led her out upon 
the deck. The scuppers were awash now and she 
gasped as the sea licked her bare feet. “ Cold, is n't 
it ? ” he remarked. “ But there's no time to dress, 


THE TIDE TAKES A HAND 


52 

and it’s just as well, perhaps, for heavy clothes would 
only hamper you.” 

She strove to avoid the icy waters and finally paused, 
moaning: “ I can’t! I can’t go on! ” 

Slipping his arm about her, he bore her to the door 
of the main cabin and entered. He could feel her 
warm, soft body quivering against his own. She 
had clasped his neck so tightly that he could scarcely 
breathe, but, lowering her until her feet were on the 
dry carpet, he gently loosed her arms. 

“ Now, my dear child,” he told her, “ you must do 
exactly as I tell you. Come! Calm yourself or I 
won’t take you any farther.” He held her off by her 
shoulders. “ I may have to swim with you; you 
must n’.t cling to me so! ” 

He heard her gasp and felt her draw away abruptly. 
Then he led her by the hand out upon the starboard 
deck, and together they made their way forward to 
the neighborhood of the bridge. 

The lights he had seen upon coming from the for¬ 
ward hold were still in view and he hailed them at the 
top of his voice. But other voices were calling 
through the night, some of them comparatively close 
at hand, others answering faintly from far in-shore. 
The boats first launched were evidently landing, and 
those in charge of them were shouting directions to the 


THE TIDE TAKES A HAND 


53 

ones behind. Some women had started singing and 
the chorus floated out to the man and the girl : 

Pull for the shore, sailor, 

Pull for the shore. 

It helped to drown their cries for assistance. 

O’Neil judged that the ship was at least a quarter 
of a mile from the beach, and his heart sank, for he 
doubted that either he or his companion could last 
long in these waters. It occurred to him that Brennan 
might be close by, waiting for the Nebraska to sink — 
it would be unlike the little captain to forsake his 
trust until the last possible moment — but he reasoned 
that the cargo of lives in the skipper’s boat would in¬ 
duce him to stand well off to avoid accident. He 
called lustily time after time, but no answer came. 

Meanwhile the girl stood quietly beside him. 

“Can’t we make a raft?” she suggested, timidly, 
when he ceased to shout. “ I’ve read of such things.” 

“ There ’s no time,” he told her. “ Are you very 
cold?” 

She nodded. “ Please forgive me for acting so 
badly just now. It was all so sudden and — so aw¬ 
ful! I think I can behave better. Oh! What was 
that?” She clutched him nervously, for from the 
forward end of the ship had come a muffled scream, 
like that of a woman. 


54 


THE TIDE TAKES A HAND 


“ It ’s my poor horses,” said the man, and she 
looked at him curiously, prompted by the catch in his 
throat. 

There followed a wait which seemed long, but was 
in reality of but a few minutes, for the ship was 
sliding backward and the sea was creeping upward 
faster and faster. At last they heard a shuddering 
sigh as she parted from the rocks and the air rushed 
up through the deck openings with greater force. The 
Nebraska swung sluggishly with the tide; then, when 
her upper structure had settled flush with the sea, Mur¬ 
ray O’Neil todk the woman in his arms and leaped 
clear of the rail. 

The first gasping moment of immersion was fairly 
paralyzing; after that the reaction came, and the two 
began to struggle aw*ay from -the sinking ship. But 
the effect of the reaction soon wore off. The water 
was cruelly cold and their bodies ached in every nerve 
and fiber. O’Neil did his best to encourage his com¬ 
panion. He talked to her through his chattering 
teeth, and once she had recovered from the mental 
shock of the first fearful plunge she responded pluck- 
ily. He knew that his own heart was normal and 
strong, but he feared that the girl’s might not be 
equal to the strain. Had he been alone, he felt sure 
that he could have gained the Shore, but with her 


THE TIDE TAKES A HAND 55 

upon his hands he was able to make but little headway. 
The expanse of waters seemed immense; it fairly 
crushed hope out of him. The lights upon the shore 
were as distant as fixed stars. This was a country 
of heavy tides, he reflected, and he began to fear that 
the current was sweeping them out. He turned to 
look for the ship, but could see no traces of her, and 
since it was inconceivable that the Nebraska could 
have sunk so quietly, her disappearance confirmed his 
fears. More than once he fancied he heard an answer 
to hrs cries for help — the rattle of rowlocks or the 
splash of oars — but his ears proved unreliable. 

After a time the girl began to moan with pain and 
terror, but as numbness gradually robbed her of sen¬ 
sation she became quiet. A little later her grip upon 
his clothing relaxed and he saw that she was collap¬ 
sing. He drew her to him and held her so that her 
face lay upturned and her hair floated about his 
shoulders. In this position she could not drown, 
at least while his strength lasted. But he was rapidly 
losing control of himself; his teeth were clicking 
loosely, his muscles shook and twitched. It required 
a great effort to shout, and he thought that his voice 
did not carry so far as at first. Therefore he fell 
silent, paddling with his free arm and kicking, to keep 
his blood stirring. 


56 THE TIDE TAKES A HAND 

Several times he gave up and floated quietly, but 
courage was ingrained in him; deep down beneath 
his consciousness was a vitality, an inherited stubborn 
resistance to death, of which he knew nothing. It was 
that unidentified quality of mind which supports one 
man through a great sickness or a long period of priva¬ 
tion, while another of more robust physique succumbs. 
It was the same quality which brings one man out from 
desert wastes, or the white silence of the polar ice, 
while the bodies of his fellows remain to mark the 
trail. This innate power of supreme resistance is 
found in chosen individuals throughout the animal 
kingdom, and it was due to it alone that Murray O’Neil 
continued to fight the tide long after he had ceased 
to exert conscious control. 

At length there came through the man’s dazed sen¬ 
sibilities a sound different from those he had been 
hearing: it was a human voice, mingled with the meas¬ 
ured thud of oars in their sockets. It roused him like 
an electric current and gave him strength to cry out 
hoarsely. Some one answered him; then out of the 
darkness to seaward emerged a deeper blot, which 
loomed up hugely yet proved to be no more than a 
life-boat banked full of people. It came to a stop 
within an ear’s-length of him. From the babble of 
voices he distinguished one that was familiar, and 


THE TIDE TAKES A HAND 


57 


cried the name of Johnny Brennan. His brain had 
cleared now, a great dreamlike sense of thanksgiving 
warned him, and he felt equal to any effort. He was 
vaguely amazed to find that his limbs refused to obey 
him. 

His own name was 'being pronounced in shocked 
tones; the splash from an oar filled his face and 
strangled him, but he managed to lay hold of the 
blade, and was drawn in until outstretched hands 
seized him. 

An oarsman was saying: “ Be careful, there! We 

can’t take him *in without swamping.” 

But Brennan’s voice shouted: “ Make room or I ’ll 

bash in your bloody skull.” 

Another protest arose, and O’Neil saw that the 
craft was indeed loaded to the gunwales. 

“ Take the girl — q«uick,” he implored. “ I ’ll hang 
on. You can tow me.” 

The limp form was removed from his side and 
dragged over the thwarts while a murmur of excited 
voices went up. 

“ Can you hold out for a minute, Murray?” asked 
Brennan. 

“ Yes — I think so.” 

“ I’d give you my place, but you ’re too big to be 
taken in without danger.” 


THE TIDE TAKES A HAND 


58 

“Go ahead,” chattered the man in the water. 
“ Look after the giri before it’s — too late.” 

The captain’s stout hand was in his collar now and 
he heard him crying: 

“ Pull, you muscle-bound heathens! Everybody sit 
still! Now away with her, men. Keep up your 
heart, Murray, my boy; remember it takes more than 
water to kill-a good Irishman. It’s only a foot or two 
farther, and they’ve started a fire. Serves you right, 
you big idiot, for going overboard, with all those boats. 
Man dear, but you ’re pulling the arm out of me; it’s 
stretched out like a garden hose! Hey! Cover up 
that girl, and you, lady, rub her feet and hands. Good! 
Move over please —so the men can bail.” 

The next thing O’Neil knew he was feeling very 
miserable and very cdld, notwithstanding the fact that 
he was wrapped in dry clothing and lay so close to a 
roaring spruce fire that its heat blistered him. 

Brennan was bending over him with eyes wet. He 
was swearing, too, in a weak, faltering way, calling 
upon all the saints to witness that the prostrate man 
was the embodiment of every virtue, and that his 
death would be a national calamity. Others were 
gathered about, men and women, and among them 
O’Neil saw the doctor from Sitka whom he had met 
on shipboard. 


THE TIDE TAKES A HAND 


59 


As soon as he was able to speak he inquired for the 
safety of the girl he had helped to rescue. Johnny 
promptly reassured him. 

“ Man, dear, she ’s doing fine. A jigger of brandy 
brought her to, gasping like a blessed mermaid.” 

“Was anybody tost?” 

“ Praise God, not a soul! But it’s lucky I stood by 
to watch the old tub go down, or we’d be mourning 
two. You ’ll be well by morning, for there’s a crew 
for help. And now, my boy, lay yourself down again 
and take a sleep, won’t you ? It ’ll be doing you a lot 
of good.” 

But O’Neil shook his head and struggled to a sitting 
posture. 

“ Thanks, Johnny,” said he, “ but I could n’t. I can 
hear those horses screaming, and besides — I must 
make new plans.” 








> 





Ill 

THE GAY OLD DOG 


By Edna Ferber 





Ill 


THE GAY OLD DOG 



iHOSE of you who have dwelt — or even lim 


JL gered — in Chicago, Illinois (this is not a hu¬ 
morous story), are familiar with the region known as 
the Loop. For those others of you to whom Chicago 
is a transfer point between New York and San Fran¬ 
cisco there is presented this brief explanation: 

The Loop is a clamorous, smoke-infested district 
embraced by the iron arms of the elevated tracks. In 
a city boasting fewer millions, it would be known 
familiarly as downtown. From Congress to Lake 
Street, from Wabash almost to the river, those thun¬ 
derous tracks make a complete circle, or loop. Within 
it lie the retail shops, the commercial hotels, the 
theaters, the restaurants. It is the Fifth Avenue (di¬ 
luted) and the Broadway (deleted) of Chicago. And 
he who frequents it by night in search of amusement 
and cheer is known, vulgarly, as a Loop-hound. 

Jo Hertz was a Loop-hound. On the occasion of 

From “Cheerful — By Request,” copyright, 1918, by F. A. 
Stokes Co. By special permission from the author. 


THE GAY OLD DOG 


64 

those sparse first nights granted the metropolis of the 
Middle West he was always present, third row, aisle 
left. When a new loop cafe was opened Jo’s table 
always commanded an unobstructed view of anything 
worth viewing. On entering he was wont to say, 
“ Hello, Gus,” with careless cordiality to the head 
waiter, the while his eye roved expertly from table to 
table as he removed his gloves. He ordered things 
under glass, so that his table, at midnight or there¬ 
abouts, resembled a hot-bed that favors the bell sys¬ 
tem. The waiters fought for him. He was the kind 
of man who mixes his own salad dressing. He liked 
to call for a bowl, some cracked ice, lemon, garlic, 
paprika, salt, pepper, vinegar, and oil and make a rite 
of it. People at near-by tables would lay down their 
knives and forks to watch, fascinated. The secret of 
it seemed to lie in using all the oil in sight and calling 
for more. 

That was Jo — a plump and lonely bachelor of fifty. 
A plethoric, roving-eyed and kindly man, clutching 
vainly at the garments of a youth that had long slipped 
past him. Jo Hertz, in one of those pinch-waist belted 
suits and a trench coat and a little green hat, walking 
up Michigan Avenue of a bright winter’s afternoon, 
trying to take the curb with a jaunty youthfulness 
against which every one of his fat-encased muscles re- 


THE GAY OLD DOG 


65 


belled, was a sight for mirth or pity, depending on 
one’s vision. 

The gay-dog business was a late phase in the life 
of Jo Hertz. He had been a quite different sort of 
canine. The staid and harassed brother of three un¬ 
wed and selfish sisters is an under dog. The tale of 
how Jo Hertz came to be a Loop-hound should not be 
compressed within the limits of a short story. It 
should be told as are the photo plays, with frequent 
throwbacks and many cut-ins. To condense twenty- 
three years of a man’s life into some five or six thou¬ 
sand words requires a verbal economy amounting to 
parsimony. 

At twenty-seven Jo had been the dutiful, hardwork¬ 
ing son (in the wholesale harness business) of a wid¬ 
owed and gummidging mother, who called him Joey. 
If you had looked close you would have seen that now 
and then a double wrinkle would appear between Jo’s 
eyes — a wrinkle that had no business there at twenty- 
seven. Then Jo’s mother died, leaving him handi¬ 
capped by a death-bed promise, the three sisters and a 
three-story-and-basement house on Calumet Avenue. 
Jo’s wrinkle became a fixture. 

Death-bed promises should be broken as lightly 
as they are seriously made. The dead have no right 
to lay their clammy fingers upon the living. 


66 


THE GAY OLD DOG 


“ Joey,” she had said, in her high, thin voice, “ take 
care of the girls.” 

“ I will, Ma,” Jo had choked. 

“ Joey,” and the voice was weaker, “ promise me you 
won’t marry till the girls are all provided for.” Then 
as Joe had hesitated, appalled: “ Joey, it’s my dying 
wish. Promise!” 

“ I promise, Ma,” he had said. 

Whereupon his mother had died, comfortably, leav¬ 
ing him with a completely ruined life. 

They were not bad-looking girls, and they had a 
certain style, too. That is, Stell and Eva had. Car¬ 
rie, the middle one, taught school over on the West 
Side. In those days it took her almost two hours 
each way. She said the kind of costume she required 
should have been corrugated steel. But all three knew 
what was being worn, and they wore it — or fairly 
faithful copies of it. Eva, the housekeeping sister, 
had a needle knack. She could skim the State Street 
windows and come away with a mental photograph of 
every separate tuck, hem, yoke, and ribbon. Heads 
of departments showed her the things they kept in 
drawers, and she went home and reproduced them 
with the aid of a two-dollar-a-day seamstress. Stell, 
the youngest, was the beauty. They called her Babe. 
She was n’t really a beauty, but some one had once told 


THE GAY OLD DOG 


67 

her that she looked like Janice Meredith (it was when 
that work of ficti'on was at the height of popularity). 
For years afterward, whenever she went to parties, she 
affected a single, fat curl over her right shoulder, with 
a rose stuck through it. 

Twenty-three years ago one’s sisters did not strain 
at the household leash, nor crave a career. Carrie 
taught school, and hated it. Eva kept house expertly 
and complainingly. Babe’s profession was being the 
family beauty, and it took all her spare time. Eva 
always let her sleep until ten. 

This was Jo’s household, and he was the nominal 
head of it. But it was an empty title. The three 
women dominated his life. They were n’t consciously 
selfish. If you had called them cruel they would have 
put you down as mad. When you are the lone brother 
of three sisters, it means that you must constantly be 
calling for, escorting, or dropping one of them some¬ 
where. Most men of Jo’s age were standing before 
their mirror of a Saturday night, whistling blithely and 
abstractedly while they discarded a blue polka-dot for 
a maroon tie, whipped off the maroon for a shot-silk in 
favor af a plain black-and-white, because she had once 
said she preferred quiet ties. Jo, when he should have 
been preening his feathers for conquest, was saying: 

“ Well, my God, I am hurrying! Give a man time, 


68 


THE GAY OLD DOG 


can’t you? I just got home. You girls have been 
laying around the house all day. No wonder you Ye 
ready.” 

He took a certain pride in seeing his sisters well 
dressed, at a time when he should have been revelling 
in fancy waistcoats and brilliant-hued socks, according 
to* the style of that day, and the inalienable right of 
any unwed male under thirty, in any day. On those 
rare occasions when his business necessitated an out- 
of-town trip, he would spend half a day floundering 
about the shops selecting handkerchiefs, or stockings, 
or feathers, or fans, or gloves for the girls. They 
always turned out to be the wrong kind, judging by 
their reception. 

From Carrie, “ What in the world do I want of a 
fan!” 

“ I thought you did n’t have one,” Jo would say. 

“ I have n’t. I never go to dances.” 

Joe would pass a futile hand over the top of his 
head, as was his way when disturbed. “ I just thought 
you’d 'like one. I thought every girl liked a fan. 
Just,” feebly, “ just to — to have.” 

“ Oh, for pity’s sake! ” 

And from Eva or Babe, “ I ’ve got silk stockings, 
Jo.” Or, “ You brought me handkerchiefs the last 
time.” 


THE GAY OLD DOG 69 

There was something selfish in his giving, as there 
always is in any gift freely and joyfully made. They 
never suspected the exquisite pleasure it gave him to 
select these things; these fine, soft, silken things. 
There were many things about this slow-going, amiable 
brother of theirs that they never suspected. If you 
had told them he was a dreamer of dreams, for ex¬ 
ample, they would have been amused. Sometimes, 
dead-tired by nine o’clock, after a hard day down¬ 
town, he would doze over the evening paper. At in¬ 
tervals he would wake, red-eyed, to a snatch of con¬ 
versation such as,' “ Yes, but if you get a blue you 
can wear it anywhere. It’s dressy, and at the same 
time it *s quiet, too.” Eva, the expert, wrestling with 
Carrie over the problem of the new spring dress. 
They never guessed that the commonplace man in the 
frayed old smoking-jacket had banished them all from 
the room long ago; had banished himself, for that mat¬ 
ter. In his place was a tall, debonair, and rather 
dangerously handsome man to whom six o’clock spelled 
evening clothes. The kind of man who can lean up 
against a mantel, or propose a toast, or give an order 
to a man-servant, or whisper a gallant speech in a 
•lady’s ear with equal ease. The shabby old house on 
Calumet Avenue was transformed into a brocaded and 
chandeliered rendezvous for the brilliance of the city. 


70 


THE GAY OLD DOG 


Beauty was here, and wit. But none so beautiful and 
witty as She. Mrs.— er — Jo Hertz. There was 
wine, of course; but no regular display. There was 
music; the soft sheen of satin; laughter. And he the 
gracious, tactful host, king of his own domain — 

“ Jo, for heaven’s sake, if you ’re going to snore go 
to bed!” 

“ Why — did I fall asleep?” 

“ You have n’t been doing anything else all even¬ 
ing. A person would think you were fifty instead of 
thirty.” 

And Jo Hertz was again just the dull, gray, common¬ 
place brother of three well-meaning sisters. 

Babe used to say petulantly, “ Jo, why don’t you 
ever bring home any of your men friends? A girl 
might as well not have any brother, all the good you 
do.” 

Jo, conscience-stricken, did his best to make amends. 
But a man who has been petticoat-ridden for years 
loses the knack, somehow, of comradeship with 
men. He acquires, too, a knowledge of women, 
and a distaste for them, equalled only, perhaps, 
by that of an elevator-starter in a department 
store. 

Which brings us to one Sunday in May. Jo came 
home from a late Sunday afternoon walk to find com- 


THE GAY OLD DOG 


7 i 

pany for supper. Carrie often had in one of her 
school-teacher friends, or Babe one of her frivolous 
intimates, or even Eva a staid guest of the old-girl 
type. There was always a Sunday night supper of 
potato salad, and cold meat, and coffee, and perhaps 
a fresh cake. Jo rather enjoyed it, being a hospitable 
soul. But he regarded the guests with the undazzled 
eyes of a man to whom they were just so many petti¬ 
coats, timid of the night streets and requiring escort 
home. If you had suggested to him that some of his 
sisters’ popularity was due to his own presence, or if 
you had hinted that the more kittenish of these visitors 
were probably making eyes at him, he would have 
stared in amazement and unbelief. 

This Sunday night it turned out to be one of Carrie’s 
friends. 

“ Emily,” said Carrie, “ this is my brother, Jo.” 

Jo had learned what to expect in Carrie’s friends. 
Drab-looking women in the late thirties, whose facial 
lines all slanted downward. 

“ Happy to meet you,” said Jo, and looked down at 
a different sort altogether. A most surprisingly differ¬ 
ent sort, for one of Carrie’s friends. This Emily per¬ 
son was very small, and fluffy, and blue-eyed, and sort 
of — well, crinkly looking. You know. The cor¬ 
ners of her mouth when she smiled, and her eyes 


7 2 


THE GAY OLD DOG 


when she looked up at you, and her hair, which was 
brown, but had the miraculous effect, somehow, of 
being golden. 

Jo shook hands with her. Her hand was incredibly 
small, and soft, so that you were afraid of crushing it, 
until you discovered she had a firm little grip all her 
own. It surprised and amused you, that grip, as does 
a baby’s unexpected clutch on your patronizing fore¬ 
finger. As Jo felt it in his own big clasp, the strangest 
thing happened to him. Something inside Jo Hertz 
stopped working for a moment, then lurched sick- 
enly, then thumped like mad. It was his heart. He 
stood staring down at her, and she up at him, until 
the others laughed. Then their hands fell apart, lin¬ 
geringly. 

“ Are you a school-teacher, Emily? ” he said. 

“Kindergarten. It’s my first year. And don’t call 
me Emily, please.” 

“ Why not ? It’s your name. I think it’s the 
prettiest name in all the world.” Which he hadn’t 
meant to say at all. In fact, he was perfectly aghast 
to find himself saying it. But he meant it. 

At supper he passed her things, and stared, until 
everybody laughed again, and Eva said acidly, “ Why 
don’t you feed her? ” 

It was n’t that Emily had an air of helplessness. 


THE GAY OLD DOG 


73 

She just made you feel you wanted her to be helpless, 
so that you could help her. 

Jo took her home, and from that Sunday night he 
began to strain at the leash. He took his sisters out, 
dutifully, but he would suggest, with a carelessness 
that deceived no one, “ Don’t you want one of your 
girl friends to come along? That little What ’s-her- 
name — Emily, or something. So long’s I’ve got 
three of you, I might as well have a full squad.” 

For a long time he did n’t know what was the mat¬ 
ter with him. He only knew he was miserable, and 
yet happy. Sometimes his heart seemed to ache with 
an actual physical ache. He realized that he wanted 
to do things for Emily. He wanted to buy things for 
Emily — useless, pretty, expensive things that he 
could n’t afford. He wanted to buy everything that 
Emily needed, and everything that Emily desired. He 
wanted to marry Emily. That was it. He discovered 
that one day, with a shock, in the midst of a transac¬ 
tion in the harness business. He stared at the man 
with whom he was dealing until that startled person 
grew uncomfortable. 

“ What’s the matter, Hertz ? ” 

“ Matter? ” 

“ You look as if you’d seen a ghost or found a gold 
mine. I don’t know which.” 


74 


THE GAY OLD DOG 


“Gold mine,” said Jo. And then, “No. Ghost.” 

For he remembered that high, thin voice, and his 
promise. And the harness business was slithering 
downhill with dreadful rapidity, as the automobile 
business began its amazing climb. Jo tried to stop it. 
But he was not that kind of business man. It never 
occurred to him to jump out of the down-going vehicle 
and catch the up-going one. He stayed on, vainly 
applying brakes that refused to work. 

“ You know, Emily, I could n’t support two house¬ 
holds now. Not the way things are. But if you ’ll 
wait. If you’ll only wait. The girls might — that 
is, Babe and Carrie —” 

She was a sensible little thing, Emily. “Of course 
I ’ll wait. But we must n’t just sit back and let the 
years go by. We ’ve got'to help.” 

She went about it as if she were already a little 
match-making matron. She corralled all the men she 
had ever known and introduced them to Babe, Carrie, 
and Eva separately, in pairs, and en masse. She ar¬ 
ranged parties at which Babe could display the curl. 
She got up picnics. She stayed home while Jo took 
the three about. When she was present she tried to 
look as plain and obscure as possible, so that the sis¬ 
ters should show up to advantage. She schemed, and 


THE GAY OLD DOG 


75 

planned, and contrived, and hoped; and smiled into 
Jo’s despairing eyes. 

And three years went by. Three precious years. 
Carrie taught school, and hated it. Eva kept house, 
more and more complainingly as prices advanced and 
allowances retreated. Stell was still Babe, the family 
beauty; but even she knew that the time was past for 
curls. Emily’s hair, somehow, lost its glint and began 
to look just plain brown. Her crinkliness began to 
iron out. 

“ Now, look here!” Jo argued, desperately, one 
night. “ We could be happy, anyway. There’s 
plenty of room at the house. Lots of people begin that 
way. Of course, I could n’t give you all I’d like to, 
at first. But maybe, after a while —” 

No dreams of salons, and brocade, and velvet-footed 
servitors, and satin damask now. Just two rooms, all 
their own, all alone, and Emily to work for. That 
was his dream. But it seemed less possible than that 
other absurd one had been. 

You know that Emily was as practical a little thing 
as she looked fluffy. She knew women. Especially 
did she know Eva, and Carrie, and Babe. She tried 
to imagine herself taking the household affairs and 
the housekeeping pocketbook out of Eva’s expert 


THE GAY OLD DOG 


76 

hands. Eva had once displayed to her a sheaf of 
aigrettes she had bought with what she saved out of 
the housekeeping money. So then she tried to picture 
herself allowing the reins of Jo’s house to remain in 
Eva’s hands. And everything feminine and normal in 
her rebelled. Emily knew she’d want to put away 
her own freshly laundered linen, and smooth it, and 
pat it. She was that kind of woman. She knew she’d 
want to do her own delightful haggling with butcher 
and vegetable pedlar. She knew she’d want to muss 
Jo’s hair, and sit on his knee, and even quarrel with 
him, if necessary, without the awareness of three ever¬ 
present pairs of maiden eyes and ears. 

“No! No! We’d only be miserable. I know. 
Even if they did n’t object. And they would, Jo. 
Would n’t they? ” 

His silence was miserable assent. Then, “ But you 
do love me, don’t you, Emily? ” 

“ I do, Jo. I love you — and love you — and love 
you. But, Jo, I — can’t.” 

“ I know it, dear. I knew it all the time, really. 
I just thought maybe, somehow —” 

The two sat staring for a moment into space, their 
hands clasped. Then they both shut their eyes, with 
a little shudder, as though what they saw was terrible 
to look upon. Emily’s hand, the tiny hand that was 


THE GAY OLD DOG 


77 

so unexpectedly firm, tightened its hold on him, and 
his crushed the absurd fingers until she winced with 
pain. 

That was the beginning of the end, and they knew it. 

Emily was n’t the kind of girl who would be left 
to pine. There are too many Jo’s in the world whose 
hearts are prone to lurch and then thump at the feel 
of a soft, fluttering, incredibly small hand in their 
grip. One year later Emily was married to a young 
man whose father owned a large, pie-shaped slice of 
the prosperous state of Michigan. 

That being safely accomplished, there was some¬ 
thing grimly humorous in the trend taken by affairs 
in the old house on Calumet. For Eva married. 
Of all people, Eva! Married well, too, though he 
was a great deal older than she. She went off in a 
hat she had copied from a French model at Field’s, 
and a suit she had contrived with a home dressmaker, 
aided by pressing on the part of the little tailor in the 
basement over on Thirty-first Street. It was the last 
of that, though. The next time they saw her, she 
had on a hat that even she would have despaired of 
copying, and a suit that sort of melted into your gaze. 
She moved to the North Side (trust Eva for that), 
and Babe assumed the management of the household 
on Calumet Avenue. It was rather a pinched little 


78 THE GAY OLD DOG 

household now, for the harness business shrank and 
shrank. 

“ I don’t see how you can expect me to keep house 
decently on this! ” Babe would say contemptuously. 
Babe’s nose, always a little inclined to sharpness, had 
whittled down to a point of late. “ If you knew 
what Ben gives Eva.” 

“ It’s the best I can do, Sis. Business is some¬ 
thing rotten.” 

“ Ben says if you had the least bit of —” Ben was 
Eva’s husband, and quotable, as are all successful 
men. 

“ I don’t care what Ben says,” shouted Jo, goaded 
into rage. “ I’m sick of your everlasting Ben. Go 
and get a Ben of your own, why don’t you, if you ’re 
so stuck on the way he does things.” 

And Babe did. She made a last desperate drive, 
aided by Eva, and she captured a rather surprised 
young man in the brokerage way, who had made up 
his mind not to marry for years and years. Eva 
wanted to give her her wedding things, but at that Jo 
broke into sudden rebellion. 

“ No, sir! No Ben is going to buy my sister’s 
wedding clothes, understand ? I guess I’m not 
broke — yet. I ’ll furnish the money for her things, 
and there ’ll be enough of them, too.” 


THE GAY OLD DOG 


79 

Babe had as useless a trousseau, and as filled with 
extravagant pink-and-blue and lacy and frilly things 
as any daughter of doting parents. Jo seemed to 
find a grim pleasure in providing them. But it left 
him pretty well pinched. After Babe’s marriage 
(she insisted that they call her Estelle now) Jo sold 
the house on Calumet. He and Carrie took one of 
those little flats that were springing up, seemingly 
over night, all through Chicago’s South Side. 

There was nothing domestic about Carrie. She 
had given up teaching two years before, and had 
gone into Social Service work on the West Side. She 
had what is known as a legal mind — hard, clear, 
orderly — and she made a great success of it. Her 
dream was to live at the Settlement House and give 
all her time to the work. Upon the little household 
she bestowed a certain amount of grim, capable at¬ 
tention. It was the same kind of attention she would 
have given a piece of machinery whose oiling and 
running had been entrusted to her care. She hated 
it, and didn’t hestitate to say so. 

Jo took to prowling about department store base¬ 
ments, and household goods sections. He was al¬ 
ways sending home a bargain in a ham, or a sack of 
potatoes, or fifty pounds of sugar, or a window 
clamp, or a new kind of paring knife. He was for- 


8 o 


THE GAY OLD DOG 


ever doing odd little jobs that the janitor should have 
done. It was the domestic in him claiming its own. 

Then, one night, Carrie came home with a dull 
glow in her leatherly cheeks, and her eyes alight with 
resolve. They had what she called a plain talk. 

“Listen, Jo. They’ve offered me the job of first 
assistant resident worker. And I’m going to take 
it. Take it. I know fifty other girls who ’d give 
their ears for it. I go in next month.” 

They were at dinner. Jo looked up from his plate, 
dully. Then he glanced around the little dining-room, 
with its ugly tan walls and its heavy, dark furniture 
(the Calumet Avenue pieces fitted cumbersomely into 
the five-room flat). 

“ Away? Away from here, you mean — to live? ” 

Carrie laid down her fork. “ Well, really, Jo! 
After all that explanation.” 

“ But to go over there to live! Why, that neigh¬ 
borhood ’s full of dirt, and disease, and crime, and 
the Lord knows what all. I can’t let you do that, 
Carrie.” 

Carrie’s chin came up. She laughed a short little 
laugh. “ Let me! That’s eighteenth-century talk, 
Jo. My life’s my own to live. I’m going.” 

And she went. 

Jo stayed on in the apartment until the lease was 


THE GAY OLD DOG 


81 


up. Then he sold what furniture he could, stored 
or gave away the rest, and took a room on Michigan 
Avenue in one of the old stone mansions whose de¬ 
cayed splendor was being put to such purpose. 

Jo Hertz was his own master. Free to marry. 
Free to come and go. And he found he did n’t even 
think of marrying. He did n’t want to come or go, 
particularly. A rather frumpy old bachelor, with 
thinning hair and a thickening neck. Much has 
been written about the unwed, middle-aged woman; 
her fussiness, her primness, her angularity of mind 
and body. In the male that same fussiness develops, 
and a certain primness, too. But he grows flabby 
where she grows lean. 

Every Thursday evening he took dinner at Eva’s, 
and on Sunday noon at Stell’s. He tucked his nap¬ 
kin under his chin and openly enjoyed the home¬ 
made soup and the well-cooked meats. After dinner 
he tried to talk business with Eva’s husband, or 
Stell’s. His business talks were the old-fashioned 
kind, beginning: 

“Well, now, looka here. Take, f’rinstance your 
raw hides and leathers.” 

But Ben and George didn’t want to “take, f’rin¬ 
stance, your raw hides and leathers.” They wanted, 
when they took anything at all, to take golf, or poli- 


82 


THE GAY OLD DOG 


tics or stocks. They were the modern type of busi¬ 
ness man who prefers to leave his work out of his 
play. Business, with them, was a profession — a 
finely graded and balanced thing, differing from Jo’s 
clumsy, downhill style as completely as does the 
method of a great criminal detective differ from that 
of a village constable. They would listen, restively, 
and say, “ Uh-uh,” at intervals, and at the first chance 
they would sort of fade out of the room, with a mean¬ 
ing glance at their wives. Eva had two children now. 
Girls. They treated Uncle Jo with good-natured 
tolerance. Stell had no children. Uncle Jo degen¬ 
erated, by almost imperceptible degrees, from the 
position of honored guest, who is served with white 
meat, to that of one who is content with a leg and 
one of those obscure and bony sections which, after 
much turning with a bewildered and investigating 
knife and fork, leave one baffled and unsatisfied. 

Eva and Stell got together and decided that Jo 
ought to marry. 

“ It is n’t natural,” Eva told him. “ I never saw 
a man who took so little interest in women.” 

“Me!” protested Jo, almost shyly. “Women!” 

“ Yes. Of course. You act like a frightened 
schoolboy.” 

So they had in for dinner certain friends and ac- 


THE GAY OLD DOG 83 

quaintances of fitting age. They spoke of them as 
“ splendid girls.” Between thirty-six and forty. 
They talked awfully well, in a firm, clear way, about 
civics, and classes, and politics, and economics, and 
boards. They rather terrified Jo. He did n’t under¬ 
stand much that they talked about, and he felt humbly 
inferior, and yet a little resentful, as if something 
had passed him by. He escorted them home, duti¬ 
fully, though they told him not to bother, and they 
evidently meant it. They seemed capable, not only 
of going home quite unattended, but of delivering a 
pointed lecture to any highwayman or brawler who 
might molest them. 

The following Thursday Eva would say, “ How 
did you like her, Joe? ” 

“ Like who? ” Jo would spar feebly. 

“ Miss Matthews.” 

“ Who’s she?” 

“ Now, don’t be funny, Jo. You know very well 
I mean the girl who was here for dinner. The one 
who talked so well on the emigration question.” 

“ Oh, her! Why, I liked her all right. Seems to 
be a smart woman.” 

“Smart! She’s a perfectly splendid girl.” 

“ Sure,” Jo would agree cheerfully. 

“ But did n’t you like her? ” 


THE GAY OLD DOG 


84 

“ I can’t say I did, Eve. And I can’t say I did n’t. 
She made me think a lot of a teacher I had in the 
fifth reader. Name of Himes. As I recall her, she 
must have been a fine woman. But I never thought 
of her as a woman at all. She was just Teacher.” 

“ You make me tired,” snapped Eva impatiently. 
“ A man of your age. You don’t expect to marry a 
girl, do you ? A child! ” 

“ I don’t expect to marry anybody,” Jo had an¬ 
swered. 

And that was the truth, lonely though he oiten 
was. 

The following spring Eva moved to Winnetka. 
Any one who got the meaning of the Loop knows the 
significance of a move to a north-shore suburb, and 
a house. Eva’s daughter, Ethel, was growing up, 
and her mother had an eye on society. 

That did away with Jo’s Thursday dinner. Then 
Stell’s husband bought a car. They went out into 
the country every Sunday. Stell said it was getting 
so that maids objected to Sunday dinners, anyway. 
Besides, they were unhealthy, old-fashioned things. 
They always meant to ask Jo to come along, but by 
the time their friends were placed, and the lunch, and 
the boxes, and sweaters, and George’s camera, and 
everything, there seemed to be no room for a man of 


THE GAY OLD DOG 


85 

J-o's bulk. So that eliminated the Sunday dinners. 

“ Just drop in any time during the week/’ Stell 
said, “ for dinner. Except Wednesday — that’s our 
bridge night — and Saturday. And, of course, 
Thursday. Cook is out that night. Don’t wait for 
me to ’phone.” 

And so Jo drifted into that sad-eyed, dyspeptic 
family made up of those you see dining in second- 
rate restaurants, their paper propped up against the 
bowl of oyster crackers, munching solemnly and with 
indifference to the stare of the passer-by surveying 
them through the brazen plate-glass window. 

And then came the War. The war that spelled 
death and destruction to millions. The war that 
brought a fortune to Jo Hertz, and transformed him, 
over night, from a baggy-kneed old bachelor, whose 
business was a failure, to a prosperous manufacturer 
whose only trouble was the shortage in hides for the 
making of his product — leather! The armies of 
Europe called for it. Harnesses! More harnesses! 
Straps! Millions of straps. More! More! 

The musty old harness business over on Lake 
Street was magically changed from a dust-covered, 
dead-alive concern to an orderly hive that hummed 
and glittered with success. Orders poured in. Jo 
Hertz had inside information on the War. He 


86 


THE GAY OLD DOG 


knew about troops and horses. He walked with 
French and English and Italian buyers — noblemen, 
many of them — commissioned by their countries to 
get American-made supplies. And now, when he said 
to Ben or George, “ Take f’rinstance your raw hides 
and leathers,” they listened with respectful attention. 

And then began the gay-dog business in the life of 
Jo Hertz. He developed into a Loop-hound, ever 
keen on the scent of fresh pleasure. That side of Jo 
Hertz which had been repressed and crushed and 
ignored began to bloom, unhealthily. At first he 
spent money on his rather contemptuous nieces. He 
sent them gorgeous fans, and watch bracelets, and 
velvet bags. He took two expensive rooms at a down¬ 
town hotel, and there was something more tear-com¬ 
pelling than grotesque about the way he gloated over 
the luxury of a separate ice-water tap in the bath¬ 
room. He explained it. 

“Just turn it on. Ice-water! Any hour of the 
day or night.” 

He bought a car. Naturally. A glittering affair; 
in color a bright blue, with pale-blue leather straps 
and a great deal of gold fittings, and wire wheels. 
Eva said it was the kind of thing a soubrette would 
use, rather than an elderly business man. You saw 
him, too, in the Pompeian room at the Congress Hotel 


THE GAY OLD DOG 87 

of a Saturday afternoon when doubtful and roving¬ 
eyed matrons in kolinsky capes are wont to congre¬ 
gate to sip pale amber drinks. Actors grew to recog¬ 
nize the semi-bald head and the shining, round, good- 
natured face looming out at them from the dim well 
of the parquet, and sometimes, in a musical show, 
they directed a quip at him, and he liked it. He could 
pick out the critics as they came down the aisle, and 
even had a nodding acquaintance with two of them. 

“ Kelly, of the ‘ Herald,’ ” he would say carelessly. 
“ Bean, of the ‘Trib.’ They’re all afraid of him.” 

So he frolicked, ponderously. In New York he 
might have been called a Man About Town. 

And he was lonesome. He was very lonesome. 
So he searched about in his mind and brought from 
the dim past the memory of the luxuriously furnished 
establishment of which he used to dream in the even¬ 
ings when he dozed over his paper in the old house 
on Calumet. So he rented an apartment, many- 
roomed and expensive, with a man-servant in charge, 
and furnished it in styles and periods ranging through 
all the Louises. The living-room was mostly rose 
color. It was like an unhealthy and bloated bou¬ 
doir. And yet there was nothing sybaritic or un¬ 
cleanly in the sight of this paunchy, middle-aged man 
sinking into the rosy-cushioned luxury of his ridicu- 


88 


THE GAY OLD DOG 


lous home. It was a frank and naive indulgence of 
long-starved senses, and there was in it a great re¬ 
semblance to the rolling-eyed ecstasy of a schoolboy 
smacking his lips over an all-day sucker. 

The War went on, and on, and on. And the money 
continued to roll in — a flood of it. Then, one after¬ 
noon, Eva, in town on shopping bent, entered a small, 
exclusive, and expensive shop on Michigan Avenue. 
Exclusive, that is, in price. Eva’s weakness, you 
may remember, was hats. She was seeking a hat 
now. She described what she sought with a languid 
conciseness, and stood looking about her after the 
saleswoman had vanished in quest of it. The room 
was becomingly rose-illumined and somewhat dim, so 
that some minutes had passed before she realized that 
a man seated on a raspberry brocade settee not five 
feet away — a man with a walking stick, and yellow 
gloves, and tan spats, and a check suit — was her 
brother Jo. From him Eva’s wild-eyed glance 
leaped to the woman who was trying on hats before 
one of the many long mirrors. She was seated, and 
a saleswoman was exclaiming discreetly at her elbow. 

Eva turned sharply and encountered her own sales¬ 
woman returning, hat-laden. “ Not to-day,” she 
gasped. “ I’m feeling ill. Suddenly.” And al¬ 
most ran from the room. 


THE GAY OLD DOG 


That evening she told Stell, relating her news in 
that telephone pidgin-English devised by every family 
of married sisters as protection against the neighbors 
and Central. Translated, it ran thus: 

“ He looked straight at me. My dear, I thought 
I’d die! But at least he had sense enough not to 
speak. She was one of those limp, willowy creatures 
with the greediest eyes that she tried to keep softened 
to a baby stare, and could n’t, she was so crazy to get 
her hands on those hats. I saw it all in one awful 
minute. You know the way I do. I suppose some 
people would call her pretty. I don’t. And her 
color! Well! And the most expensive-looking hats. 
Aigrettes, and paradise, and feathers. Not one of 
them under seventy-five. Is n’t it disgusting! At his 
age! Suppose Ethel had been with me! ” 

The next time it was Stell who saw them. In a 
restaurant. She said it spoiled her evening. And 
the third time it was Ethel. She was one of the 
guests at a theater party given by Nicky Overton II. 
You know. The North Shore Overtons. Lake For¬ 
est. They came in late, and occupied the entire third 
row at the opening performance of “ Believe Me! ” 
And Ethel was Nicky’s partner. She was glowing 
like a rose. When the lights went up after the first 
act Ethel saw that her Uncle Jo was seated just ahead 


THE GAY OLD DOG 


90 

of her with what she afterward described as a blonde. 
Then her uncle had turned around, and seeing her, 
had been surprised into a smile that spread genially 
all over his plump and rubicund face. Then he had 
turned to face forward again, quickly. 

" Who ’s the old bird?” Nicky had asked. Ethel 
had pretended not to hear, so he had asked again. 

“My uncle,” Ethel answered, and flushed all over 
her delicate face, and down to her throat. Nicky 
had looked at the blonde, and his eyebrows had gone 
up ever so slightly. 

It spoiled Ethel’s evening. More than that, as she 
told her mother of it later, weeping, she declared it 
had spoiled her life. 

Eva talked it over with her husband in that inti¬ 
mate, kimonoed hour that precedes bedtime. She 
gesticulated heatedly with her hair brush. 

“ It’s disgusting, that’s what it is. Perfectly dis¬ 
gusting. There’s no fool like an old fool. Imagine! 
A creature like that. At his time of life.” 

There exists a strange and loyal kinship among 
men. “ Well, I don’t know,” Ben said now, and even 
grinned a little. “ I suppose a boy ’s got to sow his 
wild oats sometime.” 

“ Don’t be any more vulgar than you can help,” 


THE GAY OLD DOG 


9 i 

Eva retorted. “ And I think you know, as well as I, 
what it means to have that Overton boy interested in 
Ethel.” 

“If he’s interested in her,” Ben blundered, " I 
guess the fact that Ethel’s uncle went to the theater 
with some one who was n’t Ethel’s aunt won’t cause 
a shudder to run up and down his frail young frame, 
will it?” 

“ All right,” Eva retorted. “ If you’re not man 
enough to stop it, I ’ll have to, that’s all. I’m going 
up there with Stell this week.” 

They did not notify Jo of their coming. Eva 
telephoned his apartment when she knew he would be 
out, and asked his man if he expected his master home 
to dinner that evening. The man had said yes. Eva 
arranged to meet Stell in town. They would drive 
to Jo’s apartment together, and wait for him there. 

When she reached the city Eva found turmoil 
there. The first of the American troops to be sent 
to France were leaving. Michigan Boulevard was 
a billowing, surging mass: flags, pennants, banners, 
crowds. All the elements that make for demonstra¬ 
tion. And over the whole — quiet. No holiday 
crowd, this. A solid, determined mass of people 
waiting patient hours to see the khaki-clads go by. 


92 


THE GAY OLD DOG 


Three years of indefatigable reading had brought 
them to a clear knowledge of what these boys were 
going to. 

“ Is n’t it dreadful!” Stell gasped. 

“ Nicky Overton ’s only nineteen, thank goodness.” 

Their car was caught in the jam. When they 
moved at all it was by inches. When at last they 
reached Jo’s apartment they were flushed, nervous, 
apprehensive. But he had not yet come in. So they 
waited. 

No, they were not staying to dinner with their 
brother, they told the relieved houseman. 

Jo’s home has already been described to you. Stell 
and Eva, sunk in rose-colored cushions, viewed it 
with disgust, and some mirth. They rather avoided 
each other’s eyes. 

“ Carrie ought to be here,” Eva said. They both 
smiled at the thought of the austere Carrie in the 
midst of those rosy cushions, and hangings, and 
lamps. Stell rose and began to walk about, rest¬ 
lessly. She picked up a vase and laid it down; 
straightened a picture. Eva got up, too, and wan¬ 
dered into the hall. She stood there a moment, listen¬ 
ing. Then she turned and passed into Jo’s bedroom. 
And there you knew Jo for what he was. 

This room was as bare as the other had been ornate. 


THE GAY OLD DOG 


93 


It was Jo, the clean-minded and simple-hearted, in re¬ 
volt against the cloying luxury with which he had 
surrounded himself. The bedroom, of all rooms in 
any house, reflects the personality of its occupant. 
True, the actual furniture was panelled, cupid-sur- 
mounted, and ridiculous. It had been the fruit of 
Jo’s first orgy of the senses. But now it stood out 
in that stark little room with an air as incongruous 
and ashamed as that of a pink tarleton danseuse who 
finds herself in a monk’s cell. None of those wall- 
pictures with which bachelor bedrooms are reputed to 
be hung. No satin slippers. No scented notes. Two 
plain-backed military brushes on the chiffonier (and 
he so nearly hairless). A little orderly stack of books 
on the table near the bed. Eva fingered their titles 
and gave a little gasp. One of them was on garden¬ 
ing. 

“Well, of all things!” exclaimed Stell. A book 
on the War, by an Englishman. A detective story 
of the lurid type that lulls us to sleep. His shoes 
ranged in a careful row in the closet, with a shoe- 
tree in every one of them. There was something 
speaking about them. They looked human. Eva 
shut the door on them, quickly. Some bottles on 
the dresser. A jar of pomade. An ointment such 
as a man uses who is growing bald and is panic- 


THE GAY OLD DOG 


94 

stricken too late. An insurance calendar on the wall. 
Some rhubarb-and-soda mixture on the shelf in the 
bathroom, and a little box of pepsin tablets. 

“ Eats all kinds of things at all hours of the night,” 
Eva said,. and wandered out into the rose-coVored 
front room again with the air of one who is chagrined 
at her failure to find what she has sought. Stell fol¬ 
lowed her furtively. 

“ Where do you suppose he can be? ” she demanded. 
“ It’s ”— she glanced at her wrist —“ Why, it’s 
after six! ” 

And then there was a little click. The two women 
sat up, tense. The door opened. Jo came in. He 
blinked a little. The two women in the rosy room 
stood up. 

“Why — Eve! Why, Babe! Well! Why did n’t 
you let me know ? ” 

“ We were just about to leave. We thought you 
were n’t coming home.” 

Jo came in, slowly. 

“ I was in the jam on Michigan, watching the boys 
go by.” He sat down, heavily. The light from the 
window fell on him. And you saw that his eyes were 
red. 

And you ’ll have to learn why. He had found 
himself one of the thousands in the jam on Michigan 


THE GAY OLD DOG 


95 

Avenue, as he said. He had a place near the curb, 
where his big frame shut off the view of the unfortu¬ 
nates behind him. He waited with the placid interest 
of one who has subscribed to all the funds and societies 
to which a prosperous, middle-aged business man is 
called upon to subscribe in war time. Then, just as 
he was about to leave, impatient at the delay, the 
crowd had cried, with a queer, dramatic, exultant note 
in its voice, “ Here they come! Here come the boys! ” 
Just at that moment two little, futile, frenzied fists 
began to beat a mad tattoo on Jo Hertz’s broad back. 
Jo tried to turn in the crowd, all indignant resent¬ 
ment. “ Say, looka here! ” 

The little fists kept up their frantic beating and 
pushing. And a voice — a choked, high little voice 
— cried, “Let me by! I can’t see! You man, you! 
You big fat man! My boy’s going by — to war — 
and I can’t see! Let me by! ” 

Jo scrooged around, still keeping his place. He 
looked down. And upturned to him in agonized ap¬ 
peal was the face of little Emily. They stared at 
each other for what seemed a long, long time. It 
was really only the fraction of a second. Then Jo 
put one great arm firmly around Emily’s waist and 
swung her around in front of him. His great bulk 
protected her. Emily was clinging to his hand. She 


THE GAY OLD DOG 


96 

was breathing rapidly, as if she had been running. 
Her eyes were straining up the street. 

“ Why, Emily, how in the world!—” 

“ I ran away. Fred did n’t want me to come. He 
said it would excite -me too much.” 

“ Fred? ” 

“ My husband. He made me promise to say good- 
by to To at home.” 

“ Jo?” 

“Jo’s my boy. And he’s going to war. So I 
ran away. I had to see him. I had to see him go.” 

She was dry-eyed. Her gaze was straining up 
the street. 

“ Why, sure,” said Jo. “ Of course you want to 
see him.” And then the crowd gave a great roar. 
There came over Jo a feeling of weakness. He was 
trembling. The boys went marching by. 

“ There he is! ” Emily shrilled, above the din. 
“ There he is! There he is! There he —” And 
waved a futile little hand. It was n’t so much a wave 
as a clutching. A clutching after something beyond 
her reach. 

“ Which one? Which one, Emily?” 

“ The handsome one. The handsome one. There! ” 
Her voice quavered and died. 

Jo put a steady hand on her shoulder. “ Point 


THE GAY OLD DOG 


97 

him out,” he commanded. “ Show me.” And the 
next instant. “ Never mind. I see him.” 

Somehow, miraculously, he had picked him from 
among the hundreds. Had picked him as surely as 
his own father might have. It was Emily’s boy. He 
was marching by, rather stiffy. He was nineteen, and 
fun-loving, and he had a girl, and he did n’t particu¬ 
larly want to go to France and — to go to France. 
But more than he had hated going, he had hated not 
to go. So he miarched by, looking straight ahead, his 
jaw set so that his chin stuck out just a little. Emily’s 
boy. 

Jo looked at him, and his face flushed purple. His 
eyes, the hard-boiled eyes of a Loop-hound, took on 
the look of a sad old man. And suddenly he was no 
longer Jo, the sport; old J. Hertz, the gay dog. He 
was Jo Hertz, thirty, in love with life, in love with 
Emily, and with the stinging blood of young man¬ 
hood coursing through his veins. 

Another minute and the boy had passed on up the 
broad street — the fine, flag-bedecked :street — just 
one of a hundred service-hats bobbing in rhythmic mo¬ 
tion like sandy waves lapping a shore and flowing on. 

Then he disappeared altogether. 

Emily was clinging to Jo. She was mumbling 
something, over and over. “ I can’t. I can’t. Don’t 


98 THE GAY OLD DOG 

ask me to. I can’t let him go. Like that. I can’t.” 

Jo said a queer thing. 

“ Why, Emily! We would n’t have him stay home, 
would we? We wouldn’t want him to do anything 
different, would we? Not our boy. I’m glad he en¬ 
listed. I’m proud of him. So are you glad.” 

Little by little he quieted her. He took her to the 
car that was waiting, a worried chauffeur in charge. 
They said good-by, awkwardly. Emily’s face was a 
red, swollen mass. 

So it was that when Jo entered his own hallway 
half an hour later he blinked, dazedly, and when the 
light from the window fell on him you saw that his 
eyes were red. 

Eva was not one to beat about the bush. She sat 
forward in her chair, clutching her bag rather ner¬ 
vously. 

“ Now, look here, Jo. Stell and I are here for a 
reason. We ’re here to tell you that this thing’s got 
to stop.” 

“ Thing? Stop?” 

“ You know very well what I mean. You saw me 
at the milliner’s that day. And night before last, 
Ethel. We’re all disgusted. If you must go about 
with people like that, please have some sense of de¬ 
cency.” 


THE GAY OLD DOG 


99 

Something gathering in Jo’s face should have 
warned her. But he was slumped down in his chair 
in such a huddle, and he looked so old and fat that 
she did not heed it. She went on: “ You’ve got us 
to consider. Your sisters. And your nieces. Not to 
speak of your own —” 

But he got to his feet then, shaking, and at what 
she saw in his face even Eva faltered and stopped. 
It was n’t at all the face of a fat, middle-aged sport. 
It was a face Jovian, terrible. 

“ You! ” he began, low-voiced, ominous. “You! ” 
He raised a great fist high. “You two murderers! 
You did n’t consider me, twenty years ago. You come 
to me with talk like that. Where’s my boy! You 
killed him, you two, twenty years ago. And now he 
belongs to somebody else. Where’s my son! that 
should have gone marching by to-day? ” He flung his 
arms out in a great gesture of longing. The red veins 
stood out on his forehead. “ Where’s my son! An¬ 
swer me that, you two selfish, miserable women. 
Where’s my son! ” Then, as they huddled together, 
frightened, wild-eyed, “Out of my house! Out of 
my house! Before I hurt you! ” 

They fled, terrified. The door banged behind them. 

Jo stood, shaking, in the center of the room. Then 
he reached for a chair, gropingly, and sat down. He 


IOO 


THE GAY OLD DOG 


passed one moist, flabby hand over his forehead and 
it came away wet. The telephone rang. He sat still. 
It sounded far away and unimportant, like something 
forgotten. I think he did not even hear it with his 
conscious ear. But it rang and rang insistently. Jo 
liked to answer his telephone, when at home. 

“ Hello! ” He knew instantly the voice at the other 
end. 

“ That you, Jo? ” it said. 

“ Yes.” 

“ How ’s my boy? ” 

“ I’m all right.” 

“Listen, Jo. The crowd’s coming over to-night. 
I Ve fixed up a little poker game for you. Just eight 
of us.” 

“ I can’t come to-night, Gert.” 

“Can’t! Why not?” 

“ I’m not feeling so good.” 

“ You just said you were all right.” 

“ I am all right. Just kind of tired.” 

The voice took on a cooing note. “ Is my Joey 
tired? Then he does n’t need to play if he don’t want 
to. No, sir.” 

Jo stood staring at the black mouthpiece of the 
telephone. He was seeing a procession go marching 
by. Boys, hundreds of boys, in khaki. 


THE GAY OLD DOG 


IOI 


“ Hello! Hello! " the voice took on an anxious 
note. “ Are you there ?" 

“ Yes," wearily. 

“Jo, there *s something the matter. You're sick. 
I'm coming right over." 

“ No!" 

“Why not? You sound as if‘you'd been sleep¬ 
ing. Look here —" 

“Leave me alone!" cried Jo, suddenly, and the 
receiver clacked onto the hook. “ Leave me alone. 
Leave me alone." Long after the connection had 
been broken. 

He stood staring at the instrument with unseeing 
eyes. Then he turned and walked into the front 
room. All the light had gone out of it. Dusk had 
come on. All the light had gone out of everything. 
The zest had gone out of life. The game was over — 
the game he had been playing against loneliness and 
disappointment. And he was just a tired old man. A 
lonely, tired old man in a ridiculous, rose-colored 
room that had grown, all of a sudden, drab. 


IV 

OLE SKJARSEN’S FIRST TOUCHDOWN 


By George Fitch 









IV 


OLE SKJARSEN’S FIRST TOUCHDOWN 


A M I going to the game Saturday ? Am I ? Me ? 

Am I going to eat some more food this year? 
Am I going to draw my pay this month ? Am I going 
to do any more breathing after I get this lungful used 
up? All foolish questions, pal. Very silly conver¬ 
sation. Pshaw! 

Am I going to the game, you ask me? Is the sun 
going to get up to-morrow? You couldn't keep me 
away from that game if you put a protective tariff 
of seventy-eight per cent ad valorem, whatever that 
means, on the front gate. I came out to this town 
on business, and I ’ll have to take an extra fare train 
home to make up the time; but what of that? I’m 
going to the game, and when the Siwash team comes 
out I’m going to get up and give as near a correct 
imitation of a Roman mob and a Polish riot as my 
throat will stand; and if we put a crimp in the large¬ 
footed, humpy-shouldered behemoths we ’re going up 

From “At Good Old Siwash,” copyright, 1911, by Little, 
Brown & Company. By special permission from the author. 

105 


106 OLE SKJARSEN’S FIRST TOUCHDOWN 

against this afternoon, I’m going out to-night and 
burn the City Hall. Any Siwash man who is a gen¬ 
tleman would do it. I ’ll probably have to run like 
thunder to beat some of them to it. 

You know how it is, old man. Or maybe you 
don’t, because you made all your end runs on the Glee 
Club. But I played football all through my college 
course and the microbe is still there. In the fall I 
think football, talk football, dream football. Even 
though I go out to the field and see little old Siwash 
lining up against a bunch of overgrown hippos from 
a university with a catalogue as thick as a city direc¬ 
tory, the old mud-and-perspiration smell gets in my 
nostrils, and the desire to get under the bunch and 
feel the feet jabbing into my ribs boils up so strong 
that I have to hold on to myself with both hands. 
If you ’ve never sat on a hard board and wanted to 
be between two halfbacks with your hands on their 
shoulders, and the quarter ready to sock a ball into 
your solar plexus, and eleven men daring you to dodge 
’em, and nine thousand friends and enemies raising 
Cain and keeping him well propped up in the grand¬ 
stands — if you have n’t had that want you would n’t 
know a healthy, able-bodied want if you ran into it 
on the street. 

Of course, I never got any further along than a 


OLE SKJARSEN’S FIRST TOUCHDOWN 107 

scrub. But what’s the odds ? A broken bone feels 
just as grand to a scrub as to a star. I sometimes 
think a scrub gets more real football knowledge than 
a varsity man, because he does n’t have to addle his 
brain by worrying about holding his job and keeping 
his wind, and by dreaming that he has fumbled a punt 
and presented ninety-five yards to the hereditary en¬ 
emies of his college. I played scrub football five 
years, four of ’em under Bost, the greatest coach who 
ever put wings on the heels of a two-hundred-pound 
hunk of meat; and while my ribs never lasted long 
enough to put me on the team, what I did n’t learn 
about the game you could put in the other fellow’s 
eye. 

Say, but it’s great, learning football under a good 
coach. It’s the finest training a man can get any¬ 
where on this old globule. Football is only the small¬ 
est thing you learn. You learn how to be patient 
when what you want to do is to chew somebody up 
and spit him into the gutter. You learn to control 
your temper when it is on the high speed, with the 
throttle jerked wide open and buzzing like a hornet 
convention. You learn, by having it told you, just 
how small and foolish and insignificant you are, and 
how well this earth could stagger along without you 
if some one were to take a fly-killer and mash you 


108 OLE SKJARSEN’S FIRST TOUCHDOWN 

with it. And you learn all this at the time of life 
when your head is swelling up until you mistake it 
for a planet, and regard whatever you say as a vol¬ 
canic disturbance. 

I suppose you think, like the rest of the chaps who 
never came out to practice but observed the game 
from the dollar-and-a-half seats, that being coached 
in football is like being instructed in German or cal¬ 
culus. You are told what to do and how to do it, 
and then you recite. Far from it, my boy! They 
don’t bother telling you what to do and how to do 
it on a big football field. Mostly they tell you what 
to do and how you do it. And they do it artistically, 
too. They use plenty of language. A football coach 
is picked out for his ready tongue. He must be a 
conversationalist. He must 'be able to talk to a green¬ 
horn, with fine shoulders and a needle-shaped head, 
until that greenhorn would pick up the ball and take 
it through a Sioux war dance to get away from the 
conversation. You can’t reason with football men. 
They ’re not logical, most of them. They are selected 
for their heels and shoulders and their leg muscles, 
and not for their ability to look at you with luminous 
eyes and say: “ Yes, Professor, I think I understand.” 
The way to make ’em understand is to talk about them. 
Any man can understand you while you are telling 


OLE SKJARSEN’S FIRST TOUCHDOWN 109 

him that if he were just a little bit slower he would 
have to be tied to the earth to keep up with it. That 
hurts his pride. And when you hurt his pride he 
takes it out on whatever is in front of him — which 
is the other team. Never get in front of a football 
player when you are coaching him. 

But this brings me to the subject of Bost again. 
Bost is still coaching Siwash. This makes his ’steenth 
year. I guess he can stay there forever. He’s 
coached all these years and has never used the same 
adjective to the same man twice. There 's a record 
for you! He 's a little man, Bost is. He played end 
on some Western team when he only weighed one hun¬ 
dred and forty. Got his football knowledge there. 
But where he got his vocabulary is still a mystery. 
He has a way of convincing a man that a dill pickle 
would make a better guard than he is, and of making 
that man so jealous of the pickle that he will perform 
perfectly unreasonable feats for a week to beat it out 
for the place. He has a way of saying “ Hurry up,” 
with a few descriptive adjectives tacked on, that 
makes a man rub himself in the stung place for an 
hour; and oh, how mad he can make you while he is 
telling you pleasantly that while the little fellow play- 
ing against you is only a prep and has sloping shoul¬ 
ders and weighs one hundred and eleven stripped, he 


no OLE SKJARSEN’S FIRST TOUCHDOWN 

is making you look like a bale of hay that has been 
dumped by mistake on an athletic field. And when 
he gets a team in the gymnasium between halves, with 
the game going wrong, and stands up before them 
and sizes up their nerve and rubber backbone and 
hereditary awkwardness and incredible talent in doing 
the wrong thing, to say nothing of describing each in¬ 
dividual blunder in that queer nasal clack of his — 
well, I’d rather be tied up in a great big frying-pan 
over a good hot stove for the same length of time, 
any day in the week. The reason Bost is a great 
coach is because his men don’t dare play poorly. 
When they do he talks to them. If he would only 
hit them, or skin them by inches, or shoot at them, 
they would n’t mind it so much; but when you get 
on the field with him and realize that if you miss a 
tackle he is going to get you out before the whole 
gang and tell you what a great mistake the Creator 
made when He put joints in your arms instead of 
letting them stick out stiff as they do any other sign¬ 
post, you ’re not going to miss that tackle, that’s all. 

When Bost came to Siwash he succeeded a line of 
coaches who had been telling the fellows to get down 
low and hit the line hard, and had been showing them 
how to do it very patiently. Nice fellows, those 
coaches. Perfect gentlemen. Make you proud to as- 


OLE SKJARSEN’S FIRST TOUCHDOWN mi 

sociate with them. They could take a herd of green 
farmer boys, with wrists like mules’ ankles, and by 
Thanksgiving they would have them familiar with 
all the rudiments of the game. By that time the sea¬ 
son would be over and all the schools in the vicinity 
would have beaten us by big scores. The next year 
the last year’s crop of big farmer boys would stay at 
home to husk corn, and the coach would begin all over 
on a new crop. The result was, we were a dub school 
at football. Any school that could scare up a good 
rangy halfback and a line that could hold sheep could 
get up an adding festival at our expense any time. 
We lived in a perpetual state of fear. Some day we 
felt that the normal school would come down and beat 
us. That would be the limit of disgrace. After 
that there would be nothing left to do but disband 
the college and take to drink to forget the past. 

But Bost changed all that in one year. He did n’t 
care to show any one how to play football. He was 
just interested in making the player afraid not to play 
it. When you went down the field on a punt you 
knew that if you missed your man he would tell you 
when you came back that two stone hitching-posts out 
of three could get past you in a six-foot alley. If you 
missed a punt you could expect to be told that you 
might catch a haystack by running with your arms 


112 OLE SKJARSEN’S FIRST TOUCHDOWN 

wide open, but that was no way to catch a football. 
Maybe things like that don’t sound jabby when two 
dozen men hear them! They kept us catching punts 
between classes, and tackling each other all the way 
to our rooms and back. We simply had to play foot¬ 
ball to keep from being bawled out. It’s an awful 
thing to have a coach with a tongue like a cheese knife 
swinging away at you, and to know that if you get 
mad and quit, no one but the dear old coll, will suffer 
— but it gets the results. They use the same system 
in the East, but there they only swear at a man, I 
believe. Siwash is a mighty proper college and you 
can’t swear on its campus, whatever else you do. 
Swearing is only a lazy man’s substitute for thinking, 
anyway; and Bost wasn’t lazy. He preferred the 
descriptive; he sat up nights thinking it out. 

We began to see the results before Bost had been 
tracing our pedigrees for two weeks. First game of 
the season was with that little old dinky Normal 
School which had been scaring us so for the past five 
years. We had been satisfied to push some awkward 
halfback over the line once, and then hold on to the 
enemy so tight he could n’t run; and we started out 
that year in the same old way. First half ended o to 
o, with our boys pretty satisfied because they had kept 
the ball in Normal’s territory. Bost led the team and 


OLE SKJARSEN’S FIRST TOUCHDOWN 113 

the substitutes into the overgrown barn we used for a 
gymnasium, and while we were still patting ourselves 
approvingly in our minds he cut loose: 

“ You pasty-faced, overfed, white-livered beanbag 
experts, what do you mean by running a beauty show 
instead of a football game?” he yelled. “ Do you 
suppose I came out here to be art director of a statuary 
exhibit? Does any one of you imagine for a holy 
minute that he knows the difference between a foot¬ 
ball game and ushering in a church ? Don’t fool your¬ 
selves. You don’t; you don’t know anything. All 
you ever knew about football I could carve on granite 
and put in my eye and never feel it. Nothing to 
nothing against a crowd of farmer boys who have n’t 
known a football from a duck’s egg for more than 
a week! Bah! If I ever turned the Old Folks’ 
Home loose on you doll babies they’d run up a century 
while you were hunting for your handkerchiefs. 
Jackson, what do you suppose a halfback is for? 
I don’t want cloak models. I want a man who can 
stick his head down and run. Don’t be afraid of that 
bean of yours; it has n’t got anything worth saving in 
it. When you get the ball you ’re supposed to run 
with it and not sit around trying to hatch it. You, 
Saunders! You held that other guard just like a 
sweet-pea vine. Where did you ever learn that sweet, 


11 4 OLE SKJARSEN’S FIRST TOUCHDOWN 

lovely way of falling down on your nose when a real 
man sneezes at you? Did you ever hear of sand? 
Eat it! Eat it! Fill your self up with it. I want 
you to get in that line this half and stop something 
or I ’ll make you play left end in a fancy-work club. 
Johnson, the only way to get you around the field is 
to put you on wheels and haul you. Next time you 
grow fast to the ground I’m going to violate some 
forestry regulations and take an axe to you. Same 
to you, Briggs. You’d make the All-American 
boundary posts, but that’s all. Vance, I picked you 
for a quarterback, but I made a mistake; you ought to 
be sorting eggs. That ball is n’t red hot. You don’t 
have to let go of it as soon as you get it. Don’t be 
afraid, nobody will step on you. This is n’t a rude 
game. It’s only a game of post-office. You need n’t 
act so nervous about it. Maybe some of the big girls 
will kiss you, but it won’t hurt.” 

Bost stopped for breath and eyed us. We were a 
sick-looking crowd. You could almost see the re¬ 
marks sticking into us and quivering. We had come 
in feeling pretty virtuous, and what we were getting 
was a hideous surprise. 

‘‘Now I want to tell this tea-party something,” 
continued Bost. “ Either you ’re going out on that 
field and score thirty points this last half or I’m 


OLE SKJARSEN’S FIRST TOUCHDOWN 115 

going to let the girls of Siwash play your football for 
you. I’m tired of coaching men that are n’t good at 
anything but falling down scientifically when they ’re 
tackled. There is n’t a broken nose among you. 
Every one of you will run back five yards to pick out 
a soft spot to fall on. It’s got to stop. You ’re 
going to hold on to that ball this half and take it 
places. If some little fellow from Normal crosses 
his fingers and says * naughty, naughty/ don’t fall on 
the ball and yell ‘ down ’ until they can hear it up¬ 
town. Thirty points is what I want out of you this 
half, and if you don’t get ’em — well, you just dare 
to come back here without them, that’s all. Now get 
out on that field and jostle somebody. Git!” 

Did we git? Well, rather. We were so mad our 
clothes smoked. We would have quit the game right 
there and resigned from the team, but we did n’t dare 
to. Bost would have talked to us some more. And 
we did n’t dare not to make those thirty points, either. 
It was an awful tough job, but we did it with a couple 
over. We raged like wild beasts. We scared those 
gentle Normalit.es out of their boots. I can’t imagine 
how we ever got it into our heads that they could play 
football, anyway. When it was all over we went 
back to the gymnasium feeling righteously triumphant, 
and had another hour with Bost in which he took us 


n6 OLE SKJARSEN’S FIRST TOUCHDOWN 

all apart without anesthetics, and showed us how 
Nature would have done a better job if she had used 
a better grade of lumber in our composition. 

That day made the Siwash team. The school went 
wild over the score. Bost rounded up two or three 
more good players, and every afternoon he lashed us 
around the field with that wire-edged tongue of his. 
On Saturdays we played, and oh, how we worked! In 
the first half we were afraid of what Bost would say 
to us when we came off the field. In the second half 
we were mad at what he had said. And how he did 
drive us down the field in practice! I can remember 
whole cross sections of his talk yet: 

“ Faster, faster, you scows. Line up. Quick! 
Johnson, are you waiting for a stone-mason to set 
you? Snap the ball. Tear into them. Low! Low! 
Hi-i! You end, do you think you ’re the quarter pole 
in a horse race? Nine men went past you that time. 
If you can’t touch ’em drop ’em a souvenir card. 
Line up. Faster, faster! Oh, thunder, hurry up! If 
you ran a funeral, center, the corpse would spoil on 
your hands. Wow! Fumble! Drop on that ball. 
Drop on it! Hogboom, you’d fumble a loving-cup. 
Use your hand instead of your jaw to catch that ball. 
It is n’t good to eat. That’s four chances you’ve 
had. I could lose two games a day if I had you all 


OLE SKJARSEN’S FIRST TOUCHDOWN 117 

the time. Now try that signal again — low, you line¬ 
men; there’s no girls watching you. Snap it; snap 
it. Great Scott! Say, Hogboom, come here. When 
you get that ball, don’t think we gave it to you to nurse. 
You ’re supposed to start the same day with the line. 
We give you that ball to take forward. Have you 
got to get a legal permit to start those legs of yours? 
You’d make a good vault to store footballs in, but 
you ’re too stationary for a fullback. Now I ’ll give 
you one more chance —” 

And maybe Hogboom would n’t go some with that 
chance! 

In a month we had a team that would n’t have used 
past Siwash teams to hold its sweaters. It was mad 
all the time, and it played the game carnivorously. 
Siwash was delirious with joy. The whole school 
turned out for practice, and to see those eleven men 
snapping through signals up and down the field as 
fast as an ordinary man could run just congested us 
with happiness. You ’ve no idea what a lovely time 
of the year autumn is when you can go out after 
classes and sit on a pine seat in the soft dusk and 
watch your college team pulling off end runs in as 
pretty formation as if they were chorus girls, while 
you discuss lazily with your friends just how many 
points it is going to run up on the neighboring 


118 OLE SKJARSEN’S FIRST TOUCHDOWN 

schools. I never expect to be a Captain of Industry, 
but it could n’t make me feel any more contented or 
powerful or complacent than to be a busted-up scrub 
in Siwash, with a team like that to watch. I’m pretty 
sure of that. 

But, happy as we were, Bost was n’t nearly content. 
He had ideals. I believe one of them must have been 
to run that team through a couple of brick flats with¬ 
out spoiling the formation. Nothing satisfied him. 
He was particularly distressed about the fullback. 
Hogboom was a good fellow and took signal practice 
perfectly, but he was no fiend. He lacked the vivac¬ 
ity of a real, first-class Bengal tiger. He would n’t 
eat any one alive. He’d run until he was pulled 
down, but you never expected him to explode in the 
midst of seven hostiles and ricochet down the field 
for forty yards. He never jumped over two men and 
on to another, and he never dodged two ways at once 
and laid out three men with stiff arms on his way to 
the goal. It was n’t his style. He was good for two 
and a half yards every time, but that did n’t suit Bost. 
He was after statistics, and what does a three-yard 
buck amount to when you want 70 to o scores ? 

The result of this dissatisfaction was Ole Skjarsen. 
Late in September Bost disappeared for three days 
and came back leading Ole by a rope — at least, he 


OLE SKJARSEN’S FIRST TOUCHDOWN 119 

was towing him by an old carpet-bag when we sighted 
him. Bost found him in a lumber camp, he afterward 
told us, and had to explain to him what college was 
before he would quit his job. He thought it was 
something good to eat at first, I believe. Ole was a 
timid young Norwegian giant, with a rick of white 
hair and a reenforced concrete physique. He escaped 
from his clothes in all directions, and was so green 
and bashful that you would have thought we were 
cannibals from the way he shied at us — though, as 
that was the year the bright hat-ribbons came in, I 
can’t blame him. He was n’t like anything we had 
ever seen before in college. He was as big as a cart¬ 
horse, as graceful as a dray and as meek as a mis¬ 
sionary. He had a double width smile and a thin 
little old faded voice that made you think you could 
tip him over and shine your shoes on him with im¬ 
punity. But I would n’t have tried it for a month’s 
allowance. His voice and his arms did n’t harmonize 
worth a cent. They were as big as ordinary legs — 
those arms, and they ended in hands that could have 
picked up a football and mislaid it among their fin¬ 
gers. 

No wonder Ole was a sensation. He did n’t look 
exactly like football material to us, I 'll admit. He 
seemed more especially designed for light derrick 


120 OLE SKJARSEN’S FIRST TOUCHDOWN 

work. But we trusted Bost implicitly by that time 
and we gave him a royal reception. We crowded 
around him as if he had been a T. R. capture straight 
from Africa. Everybody helped him register third 
prep, with business-college extras. Then we took him 
out, harnessed him in football armor, and set to work 
to teach him the game. 

Bost went right to work on Ole in a businesslike 
manner. He tossed him the football and said, 
“ Catch it.” Ole watched it sail past and then tore 
after it like a pup retrieving a stick. He got it in a 
few minutes and brought it back to where Bost was 
raving. 

“ See here, you overgrown fox terrier,” he shouted, 
“ catch it on the fly. Here! ” He hurled it at him. 

“ Aye ent seen no fly,” said Ole, allowing the ball 
to pass on as he conversed. 

“ You cotton-headed Scandinavian cattleship ballast, 
catch that ball in your a?rms when I throw it to you, 
and don’t let go of it! ” shrieked Bost, shooting it at 
him again. 

“ Oil right,” said Ole patiently. He cornered the 
ball after a short struggle and stood hugging it faith¬ 
fully. 

“Toss it back, toss it back!” howled Bost, jump¬ 
ing up and down. 


OLE SKJARSEN’S FIRST TOUCHDOWN 121 

“ Yu tal me to hold it,” said Ole reproachfully, 
hugging it tighter than ever. 

“Drop it, you Mammoth Cave of ignorance!” 
yelled Bost. “ If I had your head I’d sell it for 
cordwood. Drop it! ” 

Ole dropped the ball placidly. “ Das ban fule 
game,” he smiled dazedly. “ Aye ent care for it. 
Eny faller got a Yewsharp? ” 

That was the opening chapter of Ole’s instruction. 
The rest were just like it. You had to tell him to 
do a thing. You then had to show him how to do it. 
You then had to tell him how to stop doing it. After 
that you had to explain that he was n’t to refrain for¬ 
ever— just until he had to do it again. Then you 
had to persuade him to do it again. He was as good- 
natured as a lost puppy, and just as hard to reason 
with. In three nights Bost was so hoarse that he 
could n’t talk. He had called Ole everything in the 
dictionary that is fit to print; and the knowledge that 
Ole did n’t understand more than a hundredth part 
of it, and did n’t mind that, was wormwood to his soul. 

For all that, we could see that if any one could 
teach Ole the game he would make a fine player. He 
was as hard as flint and so fast on his feet that we 
could n’t tackle him any more than we could have 
tackled a jack-rabbit. He learned to catch the ball 


122 OLE SKJARSEN’S FIRST TOUCHDOWN 

in a night, and as for defense — his one-handed 
catches of flying players would have made a National 
League fielder envious. But with all of it he was 
perfectly useless. You had to start him, stop him, 
back him, speed him up, throttle him down and run 
him off the field just as if he had been a close-coupled 
next year’s model scootcart. If we could have rigged 
up a driver’s seat and chauffeured Ole, it would have 
been all right. But every other method of trying to 
get him to understand what he was expected to do was 
a failure. He just grinned, took orders, executed 
them, and waited for more. When a two-hundred- 
and-twenty-pound man takes a football, wades through 
eleven frantic scrubs, shakes them all off, and then 
stops dead with a clear field to the goal before him — 
because his instructions ran out when he shook the 
last scrub — you can be pardoned for feeling hope¬ 
less about him. 

That was what happened the day before the Mug- 
gledorfer game. Bost had been working Ole at full¬ 
back all evening. He and the captain had steered 
him up and down the field as carefully as if he had 
been a sea-going yacht. It was a wonderful sight. 
Ole was under perfect control. He advanced the ball 
five yards, ten yards, or twenty at command. Noth- 


OLE SKJARSEN’S FIRST TOUCHDOWN 123 

ing could stop him. The scrubs represented only so 
many doormats to him. Every time he made a play 
he stopped at the latter end of it for instructions. 

When he stopped the last time, with nothing before 
him but the goal, and asked placidly, “ Vere skoll I 
take das ball now, Master Bost? ” I thought the coach 
would expire of the heat. He positively steamed with 
suppressed emotion. He swelled and got purple 
about the face. We were alarmed and were getting 
ready to hoop him like a barrel, when he found hi's 
tongue at last. 

“ You pale-eyed, prehistoric mudhead, ,, he splut¬ 
tered, “ I’ve spent a week trying to get through that 
skull lining of yours. It’s no use, you field boulder. 
Where do you keep your brains? Give me a chance 
at them. I just want to get into them one minute 
and stir them up with my finger. To think that I 
have to use you to play football when they are paying 
five dollars and a half for ox meat in Kansas City. 
Skjarsen, do you know anything at all? ” 

“ Aye ban getting gude eddication,” said Ole 
serenely. “ Aye tank I ban college faller purty sune, 
I don’t know. I like I skoll understand all das har 
big vorts yu make.” 

“ You ’ll understand them, I don’t think,” moaned 


124 OLE SKJARSEN’S FIRST TOUCHDOWN 

Bost. “ You could n’t understand a swift kick in the 
ribs. You are a fool. Understand that, mutton- 
head?” 

Ole understood. “ Vy for ye call me fule?” he 
said indignantly. “ Aye du yust vat you say.” 

“Ar-r-r-r!” bubbled Bost, walking around himself 
three or four times. “ You do just what I say! Of 
course you do-. Did I tell you to stop in the middle 
of the field? What would Muggledorfer do to you if 
you stopped there ? ” 

“ Ye ent tal me to go on,” said Ole sullenly. “ Aye 
go on, Aye gass, pooty qveek den.” 

“ You bet you’dl go on,” said Bost. “ Now, look 
here, you sausage material, to-morrow you play full¬ 
back. You stop everything that comes at you* from 
the other side. Hear? You catch the ball when it 
comes to you. Hear? And when they give you the 
ball you take it, and don’t you dare to stop with it. 
Get that? Can I get that into your head without a 
drill and a blast? If you dare to stop with that ball 
I ’ll ship you back to the lumber camp in a cattle car. 
Stop in the middle of the field — Ow!” 

But at this point we took Bost away. 

The next afternoon we dressed Ole up in his ar¬ 
mor— he invariably got it on wrong side out if we 
did n’t help him — and took him out to the field. We 


OLE SKJARSEN’S FIRST TOUCHDOWN 125 

confidently expected to promenade all over Muggle- 
dorfer — their coach was an innocent child beside 
Bost — and that was the reason why Ole was going 
to play. It did n’t matter much what he did. 

Ole was just coming to a boil when we got him into 
his clothes. Bost’s remarks had gotten through his 
hide at last. He was pretty slow, Ole was, but he had 
begun getting mad the night before and had kept at 
the job all night and all morning. By afternoon he 
was seething, mostly in Norwegian. The injustice of 
being called a muttonhead all week for not obeying 
orders, and then being called a mudhead for stopping 
for orders, churned his soul, to say nothing of his 
language. He only averaged one English word in 
three, as he told us on the way out that to-day he 
was going to do exactly as he had been told or fill a 
martyr’s grave — only that was n’t the way he put it. 

The Muggledorfers were a pruny-looking lot. We 
had the game won when our team came out and glared 
at them. Bost had filled most of the positions with 
regular young mammoths, and when you dressed them 
up in football armor they were enough to make a 
Dreadnought a little nervous. The Muggleses kicked 
off to our team, and for a few plays we plowed along 
five or ten yards at a time. Then Ole was given the 
ball. He went twenty-five yards. Any other man 


126 OLE SKJARSEN’S FIRST TOUCHDOWN 

would have been crushed to earth in five. He just 
waded through the middle of the line and went down 
the field, a moving mass of wrigging men. It was 
a wonderful play. They disinterred him at last and 
he started straight across the field for Bost. 

“ Aye ent mean to stop, Master Bost,” he shouted. 
“ Dese fallers har, dey squash me down —” 

We hauled him into line and went to work again. 
Ole had performed so well that the captain called his 
signal again. This time I hope I may be roasted in a 
subway in July if Ole did n’t run twenty-five yards 
with four Muggledorfer men hanging on his legs. 
We stood up and yelled until our teeth ached. It 
took about five minutes to get Ole dug out, and then 
he started for Bost again. 

“ Honest, Master Bost, Aye ent mean to stop,” he 
said imploringly. “ Aye yust tal you, dese fallers ban 
devils. Aye fule dem naxt time —” 

“ Line up and shut up! ” the captain shouted. The 
ball was n’t over twenty yards from the line, and as 
a matter of course the quarter shot it back to Ole. 
He put his head down, gave one mad-bull plunge, laid 
a windrow of Muggledorfer players out on either side, 
and shot over the goal line like a locomotive. 

We rose up to cheer a few lines, but stopped to 
stare. Ole did n’t stop at the goal line. He did n’t 


OLE SKJARSEN’S FIRST TOUCHDOWN 127 

stop at the fence. He put up one hand, hurdled it, 
and disappeared across the campus like a young whirl¬ 
wind. 

“ He does n’t know enough to stop! ” yelled Bost, 
rushing up to the fence. “ Hustle up, you fellows, 
and bring him back! ” 

Three or four of us jumped the fence, but it was 
a hopeless game. Ole was disappearing up the cam¬ 
pus and across the street. The Muggledorfer team 
was nonplussed and sort of indignant. To be bowled 
over by a cyclone, and then to have said cyclone break 
up the game by running away with the ball was to 
them a new idea in football. It was n’t to those of us 
who knew Ole, however. One of us telephoned down 
to the “ Leader ” office where Hinckley, an old team 
man, worked, and asked him to head off Ole and 
send him back. Muggledorfer kindly consented to 
call time, and we started after the fugitive ourselves. 

Ten minutes later we met Hinckley downtown. He 
looked as if he had had a slight argument with a 
thirteen-inch shell. He was also mad. 

“ What was that you asked me to stop? ” he snorted, 
pinning himself together. “ Was it a gorilla or a high 
explosive? When did you fellows begin importing 
steam rollers for the team? I asked him to stop. I 
ordered him to stop. Then I went around in front of 


128 OLE SKJARSEN’S FIRST TOUCHDOWN 

him to stop him — and he ran right over me. I held 
on for thirty yards, but that’s no way to travel. I 
could have gone to the next town just as well, though. 
What sort of a game is this, and where is that tow¬ 
headed holy terror bound for?” 

We gave the answer up, but we could n’t give up 
Ole. He was too valuable tq lose. How to catch 
him was the sticker. An awful uproar in the street 
gave us an idea. It was Ted Harris in the only auto 
in town — one of the earliest brands of sneeze 
vehicles. In a minute more four of us were in, and 
Ted was chiveying the thing up the street. 

If you’ve never chased an escaping fullback in one 
of those pioneer automobiles you’ve got something 
coming. Take it all around, a good, swift man, run¬ 
ning all the time, could almost keep ahead of one. 
We pumped up a tire, fixed a wire or two, and cranked 
up a few times; and the upshot of it was we were two 
miles out on the state road before we caught sight of 
Ole. 

He was trotting briskly when we caught up with 
him, the ball under his arm, and that patient, resigned 
expression on his face that he always had when Bost 
cussed him. “ Stop, Ole,” I yelled; “ this is no Mara¬ 
thon. Come back. Climb in here with us.” 

Ole shook his head and let out a notch of speed. 


OLE SKJARSEN’S FIRST TOUCHDOWN 129 

“ Stop, you mullethead,” yelled Simpson above the 
roar of the auto — those old machines could roar 
some, too. “ What do you mean by running off with 
our ball? You’re not supposed to do hare-and- 
hounds in football.” 

Ole kept on running. We drove the car on ahead, 
stopped it across the road, and jumped out to stop 
him. When the attempt was over three of us picked 
up the fourth and put him aboard. Ole had tramped 
on us and had climbed over the auto. 

Force would n’t do, that was plain. “ Where are 
you going, Ole ? ” we pleaded as we tore along beside 
him. 

“ Aye ent know,” he panted, laboring up a hill; “ das 
ban fule game, Aye tenk.” 

“ Come on back and play some more,” we urged. 
“ Bost won’t like it, your running all over the country 
this way.” 

“ Das ban my orders,” panted Ole. 44 Aye ent no 
fule, yentlemen; Aye know ven Aye ban doing right 
teng. Master Bost he say 4 Keep on running! ’ Aye 
gass I run till hal freeze on top. Aye ent know why. 
Master Bost he know, I tenk.” 

44 This is awful,” said Lambert, the manager of the 
team. 44 He’s taken Bost literally again — the chump. 
He ’ll run till he lands up in those pine woods again. 


i 3 o OLE SKJARSEN’S FIRST TOUCHDOWN 

And that ball cost the association five dollars. Be¬ 
sides, we want him. What are we going to do ? ” 

“ I know,” I said. “ We ’re going back to get 
Bost. I guess the man who started him can stop 
him.” 

We left Ole still plugging north and ran back to 
town. The game was still hanging fire. Bost was 
tearing his hair. Of course, the Muggledorfer fel¬ 
lows could have insisted on playing, but they were n’t 
anxious. Ole or no Ole, we could have walked all 
over them, and they knew it. Besides, they were hav¬ 
ing too much fun with Bost. They were sitting 
around, Indian-like, in their blankets, and every three 
minutes their captain would go and ask Bost with 
perfect politeness whether he thought they had better 
continue the game there or move it on to the next 
town in time to catch his fullback as he came through. 

“Of course, we are in no hurry,” he would explain 
pleasantly; “we ’re just here for amusement, anyway; 
and it’s as much fun watching you try to catch your 
players as it is to get scored on. Why don’t you 
hobble them, Mr. Bost? A fifty-yard rope wouldn’t 
interfere much with that gay young Percheron of 
yours, and it would save you lots of time rounding him 
up. Do you have to use a lariat when you put his 
harness on? ” 


OLE SKJARSEN’S FIRST TOUCHDOWN 131 

Fancy Bost having to take all that conversation, 
with no adequate reply to make. When I got there 
he was blue in the face. It did n’t take him half a 
second to decide what to do. Telling the captain of 
the Si wash team to go ahead and play if Muggle- 
dorfer insisted, and on no account to use that 32 
double-X play except on first downs, he jumped into 
the machine and we started for Ole. 

There were no speed records in those days. 
Would n’t have made any difference if there were. 
Harris just turned on all the juice his old double- 
opposed motor could soak up, and when we hit the 
wooden crossings on the outskirts of town we fellows 
in the tonneau went up so high that we changed sides 
coming down. It was n’t over twenty minutes till we 
sighted a little cloud of dust just beyond a little town 
to the north. Pretty soon we saw it was Ole. He 
was still doing his six miles per. We caught up and 
Bost hopped out, still mad. 

“ Where in Billy-be-blamed are you going, you hu¬ 
man trolley car ? ” he spluttered, sprinting along be¬ 
side Skjarsen. “ What do you mean by breaking up a 
game in the middle and vamoosing with the ball ? Do 
you think we ’re going to win this game on mileage ? 
Turn around, you chump, and climb into this car.” 

Ole looked around him sadly. He kept on run- 


i 3 2 OLE SKJARSEN’S FIRST TOUCHDOWN 

ning as he did. “ Aye ent care to stop,” he said. 
“ Aye kent suit you, Master Bost. You tal me Aye 
skoll du a teng, den you cuss me for duing et. You 
tal me not to du a teng and you cuss me some more 
den. Aye tenk I yust keep on a-running, lak yu tal 
me tu last night. Et ent so hard bein’ cussed ven yu 
ban running.” 

“ I tell you to stop, you potato-top,” gasped Bost. 
By this time he was fifteen yards behind and losing 
at every step. He had wasted too much breath on 
oratory. We picked him up in the car and set him 
alongside of Ole again. 

“ See here, Ole, I’m tired of this,” he said, sprint¬ 
ing up by him again. “ The game’s waiting. Come 
on back. You ’re making a fool of yourself.” 

“ Eny teng Aye du Aye ban beeg fule,” said Ole 
gloomily. “ Aye yust keep on runnin’. Fallers ent 
got breath to call me fule ven Aye run. Aye tenk das 
best vay.” 

We picked Bost up again thirty yards behind. 
Maybe he would have run better if he had n’t choked 
so in his conversation. In another minute we landed 
him abreast of Ole again. He got out and sprinted 
for the third time. He wabbled as he did it. 

“ Ole,” he panted, “ I’ve been mistaken in you. 
You are all right, Ole. I never saw a more intelli- 


OLE SKJARSEN’S FIRST TOUCHDOWN 133 

gent fellow. I won’t cuss you any more, Ole. If 
you ’ll stop now we ’ll take you back in an automobile 
— hold on there a minute; can’t you see I’m all out of 
breath ? ” 

“ Aye ban gude faller, den? ” asked Ole, letting out 
another link of speed. 

“You are a”—puff-puff—“peach, Ole,” gasped 
Bost. “ I ’ll ”— puff-puff —“ never cuss you again. 
Please ”— puff-puff —“ stop! Oh, hang it, I’m all 
in.” And Bost sat down in the road. 

A hundred yards on we noticed Ole slacken speed. 
“ It’s sinking through his skull,” said Harris eagerly. 
In another minute he had stopped. We picked up 
Bost again and ran up to him. He surveyed us long 
and critically. 

“ Das ben qveer masheen,” he said finally. “ Aye 
tenk Aye lak Aye skoll be riding back in it. Aye ent 
care for das futball game, Aye gass. It ban tu much 
running in it.” 

We took Ole back to town in twenty-two minutes, 
three chickens, a dog and a back spring. It was close 
to five o’clock when he ran out on the field again. 
The Muggledorfer team was still waiting. Time was 
no object to them. They would only play ten minutes, 
but in that ten minutes Ole made three scores. Five 
substitutes stood back of either goal and asked him 


i 3 4 OLE SKJARSEN’S FIRST TOUCHDOWN 

with great politeness to stop as he tore over the line. 
And he did it. If any one else had run six miles be¬ 
tween halves he would have stopped a good deal short 
of the line. But as far as we could see, it had n’t 
winded Ole. 

Bost went home by himself that night after the 
game, not stopping even to assure us that as a team 
we were beneath his contempt. The next afternoon 
he was, if anything, a little more vitriolic than ever — 
but not with Ole. Toward the middle of the signal 
practice he pulled himself together and touched Ole 
gently. 

“ My dear Mr. Skjarsen,” he said apologetically, 
“if it will not annoy you too much, would you mind 
running the same way the rest of the team does? I 
don’t insist on it, mind you, but it looks so much 
better to the audience, you know.” 

“ Jas,” said Ole; “ Aye ban fule, Aye gass, but yu 
ban tu polite to say it.” 


V 

THE OUTLAW 


By Hamlin Garland 













V 


THE OUTLAW! 

I 

F REEMAN WARD, geologist for the government, 
was not altogether easy in his mind as he led 
his little pack-train out of Pinedale, a frontier settle¬ 
ment on the western slope of the Rocky Mountain di¬ 
vide, for he had permitted the girl of his deepest 
interest to accompany him on his expedition. 

Alice Mansfield, accustomed to having her way, and 
in this case presuming upon Ward’s weakness, in¬ 
sisted on going. Outwardly he had argued against 
it, making much of the possible storms, of the rough 
trails, of the cold and dampness. But she argued that 
she was quite as able to go as Mrs. Adams, the wife 
of the botanist of the expedition. So Ward had 
yielded, and here these women were forming part of 
a cavalcade which was headed for Fremont Peak, con¬ 
cerning whose height and formation the leader wished 
to inform himself. Alice was, however, a bit dashed 
by Ward’s change of manner as he laid upon his train 
his final instructions. 

From “They of the High Trails/' copyright, 1916, by Harper 
& Brothers. By special permission of the author. 

137 


THE OUTLAW 


138 

“ There is to be no skylarking,” he said, “ and no 
back-tracking. Each one is to exercise great care. 
We cannot afford to lose a horse nor waste our pro¬ 
visions. This is not a picnic excursion, but a serious 
government enterprise. I cannot turn back because 
of any discomfort you may encounter in camp.” 

“ I am ready for what comes,” Alice answered, 
smilingly. 

But she rode for the rest of the day remarkably 
silent. There had been times when she was certain 
that Ward cared a great deal for her — not in the im¬ 
personal way indicated by his reprimand — but in the 
way of a lover, and she was very fond of him, had 
indeed looked forward to this trip in his company as 
one sure to yield hours of delightful intimacy. On 
the train he had been very devoted, “ almost lover¬ 
like,” Peggy Adams insisted. But now she was dis¬ 
mayed by his tone of military command. 

Their first day’s march brought them to a beautiful 
water called Heart Lake, which shone dark and deep 
amid its martial firs at the head of one of the streams 
which descended into the East Fork, and there the 
guides advised a camp. They were now above the 
hunters, almost above the game, in a region “ de¬ 
lightfully primeval,” as the women put it, and very 
beautiful and peaceful. 


THE OUTLAW 


139 


After the tents were in order and the supper eaten, 
Alice, having tuned up her little metal banjo, began 
to twitter tender melodies (to the moon, of course), 
and the long face of the man of science broadened and 
he seemed less concerned about rocks and fauna and 
flora. 

The camp was maintained at Heart Lake for a day 
while Ward and his men explored the various gorges 
in order to discover a way into Blizzard Basin, which 
was their goal. They returned to camp each time 
more and more troubled about the question of taking 
the women over the divide into the “ rough country ” 
which lay to the north. 

“ It is a totally different world,” Adams explained 
to his wife. “ It is colder and stormier over there. 
The forest -on the north slopes is full of down-timber 
and the cliffs are stupendous. I wish you girls were 
back in the settlement,” and in this wish Ward heartily 
joined. 

However, the more they talked the more determined 
the women were to go. 

It was like a May day the following noon as they 
left timber-line and, following the row of tiny monu¬ 
ments set up by the foresters, entered upon the wide 
and undulating stretch of low edges which led to the 
summit. The air was clear and the verdureless shapes 


140 


THE OUTLAW 


of the monstrous peaks stood sharp as steel against the 
sky. The tender grass was filled with minute glisten¬ 
ing flowers. The wind was gentle, sweet, moist, and 
cool. 

“ Pooh! ” said Alice, “ this is absurdly easy. Free¬ 
man has been telling us dreadful tales all along just 
to be rid of us 

But she began to admit that her escort of four strong 
men was a comfort, as the guide explained that this 
“ rough country * had long been known as the retreat 
of cattle-thieves and outlaws. 

“ Do you think there are any such men in here 
now ? ” asked Mrs. Adams. 

“ Undoubtedly,” Ward said; “but I don’t think, 
from the condition of this trail, that they come in on 
this side of the range. I suspect it’s too lonely even 
for a cattle-thief.” 

They unsaddled that night on the bank of a stream 
near a small meadow, and around the camp-fire dis¬ 
cussed the trail which they were to take next day. 
The guides agreed that it was “ a holy terror,” which 
made Alice the more eager to traverse it. 

" I like trails that make men quake. I welcome 
adventure — that’s what I came for,” she said. 

Early the next forenoon, as they were descending 


THE OUTLAW 


141 

the steep north-slope trail, Alice gave out a cry of 
pain, and Adams called to Ward: 

“ Hold on! Allie’s horse is down.” 

Ward was not surprised. He rode in continual ex¬ 
pectation of trouble. She was forever trying short 
cuts and getting snared in the fallen logs. Once 
she had been scraped from her saddle by an over¬ 
hanging bough, and now, in attempting to find an easier 
path down a slippery ridge, her horse had fallen with 
her. Ward was ungracious enough to say: 

“ Precisely what I’ve warned her against,” but he 
hurried to her relief, nevertheless. 

“ Are you badly hurt ? ” he asked, as she stood be¬ 
fore him, striving to keep back her tears of pain. 

“ Oh no, not at all badly. My foot was jammed a 
little. Please help me on to my horse; I ’ll be all right 
in a minute.” 

She put so good a face on her accident that he helped 
her into her saddle and ordered the train to move on; 
but Peggy perceived that the girl was suffering keenly. 

“ Sha’n’t we stop, Allie ? ” she called, a few minutes 
later. 

“ No. I ’ll be all right in a few minutes.” 

She rode on for nearly half an hour, bravely en¬ 
during her pain, but at last she turned to Mrs. Adams 


THE OUTLAW 


142 

and cried out: “I can’t stand it, Peggy! My foot 
pains me frightfully!” 

Adams again called to Ward and the procession 
halted, while Ward came back, all his anger gone. 

“ We ’ll go into camp,” he said, as he examined her 
bruised foot. “ You ’re badly hurt.” 

“ It’s a poor place to camp, Professor,” protested 
Gage. “ If she can go on for about fifteen min¬ 
utes -—” 

“ I ’ll try,” she said; “ but I can’t bear the stirrup, 
and my shoe is full of blood.” 

Ward, who was now keenly sympathetic, put her on 
his own horse and walked beside her while they slowly 
crawled down into the small valley, which held a deep 
and grassy tarn. Here they went into camp and the 
day was lost. 

Alice was profoundly mortified to find herself the 
cause of the untimely halt, and as she watched the 
men making camp with anxious, irritated faces she 
wept with shame at her folly. She had seized the 
worst possible moment, in the most inaccessible spot 
of their journey, to commit her crowning indiscretion. 

She was ill in every nerve, shivering and weak, and 
remained for that day the center of all the activities 
of the camp. Ward, very tender even in his chagrin, 
was constantly at her side, his brow knotted with care. 


THE OUTLAW 


143 

He knew what it meant to be disabled two hundred 
miles from a hospital, with fifty miles of mountain 
trail between one's need and a roof, but Alice buoyed 
herself up with the belief that no bones were broken, 
and that in the clear air of the germless world her 
wound would quickly heal. 

She lay awake a good part of that night, hearing, 
above the roar of the water, the far-off noises of the 
wild-animal world. A wolf howled, a cat screamed, 
and their voices were fear-inspiring. 

She began also to worry about the effect of her mis¬ 
hap on the expedition, for she heard Ward say to 
Adams: “ This delay is very unfortunate. Our stay 

is so limited. I fear we will not be able to proceed 
for some days, and snow is likely to fall at any time.” 

What they said after that Alice could not hear, 
but she was in full possession of their trouble. It was 
not a question of the loss of a few days; it meant the 
possible failure of the entire attempt to reach the 
summit. 

“ Peggy/’ she declared, next morning, “ the men 
must push on and leave you with me here in the camp. 
I will not permit the expedition to fail on my ac¬ 
count.” 

This seemed a heroic resolution at the moment, with 
the menacing sounds of the night still fresh in her 


144 


THE OUTLAW 


ears, but it was the most natural and reasonable thing 
in the world at the moment, for the sun was rising 
warm and clear and the valley was as peaceful and as 
beautiful as a park. 

Mrs. Adams readily agreed to stay, for she was 
wholly free from the ordinary timidities of women, 
but Ward, though sorely tempted, replied: 

“ No. We ’ll wait a day or two longer and see how 
you come on.” 

At this point one of the guides spoke up, saying: 
“ If the women would be more comfortable in a cabin, 
there’s one down here in the brush by the lake. I 
found it this morning when I was wranglin’ the 
horses.” 

“ A cabin! In this wild place? ” said Alice. 

“ Yes, ma’am — must be a ranger’s cabin.” 

Ward mused. “If it’s habitable it would be 
warmer and safer than a tent. Let’s go see about 
it.” 

He came back jubilant. “ It does n’t seem to have 
been occupied very recently, but is in fair shape. 
We ’ll move you right down there.” 

The wounded girl welcomed the shelter of a roof, 
and it was good to feel solid logs about her helpless 
self. The interior of the hut was untidy and very 
rude, but it stood in a delightful nook on the bank of 



THE OUTLAW 


145 


a pond just where a small stream fell into the valley, 
and it required but a few minutes of Mrs. Adams’ 
efforts to clear the place out and make it cozy, and 
soon Alice, groaning faintly, was deposited in the 
rough pole bunk at the dark end of the room. What 
an inglorious end to her exalted ride! 

Ward seemed to understand her tears as he stood 
looking down upon her, but he only said: “ I dislike 

leaving you, even for the day. I shall give up my 
trip.” 

“ No, no! you must go on! ” she cried out. " I 
shall hate myself if you don’t go on.” 

He reluctantly yielded to her demand, but said: 
“ If I find that we can’t get back to-morrow I will 
send Gage back. He’s a trusty fellow. I can’t spare 
Adams, and Smith and Todd — as you know — are 
paying for their trip.” 

Mrs. Adams spoke up firmly. “ You need not worry 
about us. We can get along very well without any¬ 
body. If you climb the peak you ’ll need Gage. I’m 
not afraid. We ’re the only people in this valley, and 
with this staunch little cabin I feel perfectly at 
home.” 

“ That’s quite true,” replied Ward in a relieved 
tone. “We are above the hunters — no one ever 
crosses here now. But it will be lonely.” 


THE OUTLAW 


146 

“ Not at all! ” Alice assured him. “ We shall enjoy 
being alone in the forest.” 

With slow and hesitating feet Ward left the two 
women and swung into his saddle. “ I guess I ’ll 
send Gage back, anyhow,” he said. 

“ Don’t think of it! ” called Peggy. 

As a matter of fact, Alice was glad to have the men 
pull out. Their pity, their reproach, irritated her. It 
was as if they repeated aloud a scornful phrase — 
“ You ’re a lovely and tempting creature, but you ’re 
a fool-hen just the same.” 

The two women spent the day peacefully, save now 
and then when Alice’s wounded foot ached and needed 
care; but as night began to rise in the canon like the 
smoke of some hidden, silent, subterranean fire, and 
the high crags glowed in the last rays of the sun, each 
of them acknowledged a touch of that immemorial 
awe of the darkness with which the race began. 

Peggy, seating herself in the doorway, described 
the scene to her patient, who could see but little of it. 
“ Oh, but it’s gloriously uncanny to be here. Only 
think! We are now alone with God and His animals, 
and the night.” 

“ I hope none of God’s bears is roaming about,” re¬ 
plied Alice, flippantly. 

“ There are n’t any bears above the berries. We ’re 


THE OUTLAW 


147 

perfectly safe. My soul! but it’s a mighty country! I 
wish you could see the glow on the peaks.” 

“ I’m taking my punishment,” replied Alice. 
“ Freeman was very angry, wasn’t he?” 

“If it breaks off the match I won’t be surprised,” 
replied Peggy, with resigned intonation. 

“ There was n’t any match to break off.” 

“Well! ” replied the other, and as she slowly rose 
she added: “ I won’t say that he is perfectly dis¬ 

tracted about you, but I do know that he thinks more 
of you than of any other woman in the world, and I’ve 
no doubt he is worrying about you this minute.” 

II 

It was deep moonless night when Alice woke with a 
start. For a few moments she lay wondering what 
had roused her — then a bright light flashed and her 
companion screamed. 

“ Who’s there! ” demanded the girl. 

In that instant flare she saw a man’s face, young, 
smooth, with dark eyes gleaming beneath a broad hat. 
He stood like a figure of bronze while his match was 
burning, then exclaimed in breathless wonder: 

“ Great Peter’s ghost! a woman! ” Finally he 
stepped forward and looked down upon the white, 


148 THE OUTLAW 

scared faces as if uncertain of his senses. “ Two of 
them! ” he whispered. As he struck his second match 
he gently asked: “ Would you mind saying how you 
got here ? ” 

Alice spoke first. “ We came up with a geological 
survey. I got hurt and they had to leave us behind.” 

“ Where’s your party gone ? ” 

“ Up to the glaciers.” 

“ When did they leave ? ” 

“ Yesterday morning.” 

“When do you expect them back?” 

“ Not for two or three days.” 

He seemed to ponder a moment. “ You say you ’re 
hurt ? Where ? ” 

“ My horse slipped and fell on my foot.” 

“ Wait a minute,” he commanded. " I ’ll rustle a 
candle. I left one here.” 

When his form came out of the dark blur behind 
his candle Alice perceived that he was no ordinary 
hunter. He was young, alert, and very good-looking, 
although his face was stern and his mouth bitter. He 
laid aside his hat as he approached the bunk in which 
the two women were cowering as mice tremble before 
a cat. For a full minute he looked down at them, but 
at last he smiled and said, in a jocular tone: 

“ You ’re sure-enough women, I can see that. 



THE OUTLAW 


149 

You ’ll excuse me — but when a man comes back to a 
shack in the middle of the night in a place like this 
and finds a couple of women in a bunk he’s likely to 
think he’s seeing pictures in his sleep.” 

“ I can understand that,” Alice returned, recover¬ 
ing her self-command. “ You ’re the ranger, I sup¬ 
pose? I told my friend here that you might return.” 

“ I’m mighty glad I did,” he said, heartily. 

“ Thank you; you ’re very kind.” 

He bent a keen glare upon her. “ What’s your 
name? ” 

“ Alice Mansfield.” 

“What’s your friend’s name?” 

“ Mrs. Adams.” 

“Are you a missis, too?” 

She hesitated. This was impertinent, but then she 
herself was an intrusive guest. “ No,” she answered, 
“ I am not married.” 

“ Where are you from? ” 

“ New York City.” 

“ You ’re a long way from home.” 

“ Yes, I’m feeling that this minute.” She drew the 
coverlet a little closer to her chin. 

He quickly read this sign. “ You need n’t be afraid 
of me.” 

“ I’m not.” 


THE OUTLAW 


150 

“ Yes, you are. You ’re both all of a tremble and 
white as two sheep —” 

“ It is n’t that,” wailed the girl; “ but I’ve twisted 
my foot again.” Her moan of pain broke the spell 
that bound Peggy. 

“Would you leave, please, for a moment?” she 
called to the owner of the cabin. “ I’ve got to get 
up and doctor my patient.” 

“ Sure! ” he exclaimed, moving toward the door. 
“ If I can do anything let me know.” 

As soon as her patient’s aching foot was eased 
Peggy opened the door and peeped out. A faint flare 
of yellow had come into the east, and beside the fire, 
rolled in his blanket, the ranger was sleeping. Frost 
covered everything and the air was keen. 

" He’s out there on the cold ground — with only 
one blanket.” 

“ What a shame! Tell him to come inside — I’m 
not afraid of him.” 

“ Neither am I — but I don’t believe he ’ll come. 
It’s ’most morning, anyway — perhaps I’d better not 
disturb him.” 

“ Take one of these quilts to him — that will help 
some.” 

Mrs. Adams lifted one of the coverlets and, stealing 
softly up, was spreading it over the sleeper when he 


THE OUTLAW 


151 

woke with a start, a wild glare of alarm in his eyes. 

“ Oh, it’s you! ” he said in relief. Then he added, 
as he felt the extra cover: “ That’s mighty white of 

you. Sure you don’t need it?” 

“ We can spare it. But won’t you come inside? 
I’m sorry we drove you out of your cabin.” 

“ That’s all right. I’m used to this. Good night. 
I’m just about dead for sleep.” 

Thus dismissed, Peggy went back and lay down 
beside Alice. “ He says he’s quite comfortable,” she 
remarked, “ and I hope he is, but he does n’t look it.” 

When she woke again it was broad daylight and 
Alice was turning restlessly on her hard bed. In the 
blaze of the sun all the mystery of the night vanished. 
The incident of the return of the ranger to his cabin 
was as natural as the coming of dawn. 

“ He probably makes regular trips through here,” 
said Mrs. Adams. 

But the wounded girl silently differed, for she had 
read in the man’s eyes and voice a great deal more 
than belonged to the commonplace character of a for¬ 
est-ranger. That first vision of his face burned deep. 

She had seen on the wall of the station at “ the 
road ” the description of a train-robber which tallied 
closely with this man’s general appearance, and the 
conviction that she was living in the hidden hut of 


152 


THE OUTLAW 


an outlaw grew into a certainty. “ I must not let him 
suspect my discovery,” she thought. 

Mrs. Adams (who had not read the placard) treated 
the young fellow as if he were one of the forest 
wardens, manifesting complete confidence in him. 

He deftly helped her about breakfast, and when she 
invited him into the cabin he came readily, almost 
eagerly, but he approached Alice’s bed with a touch of 
hesitation, and his glance was softer and his voice gen¬ 
tler as he said: 

“ Well, how do you stack up this morning? ” 

“ Much better, thank you.” 

“ Must have been a jolt — my coming in last night 
the way I did?” 

“ I guess the ‘ jolt ’ was mutual. You looked sur¬ 
prised.” 

He smiled again, a faint, swift half-smile. “ Sur¬ 
prised! That’s no name for it. For a minute I 
thought I'd fallen clear through. I hope you did n’t 
get a back-set on account of it.” 

“ Oh no, thank you.” 

“ How many men are in your party? ” 

“ Six, counting the guides.” 

“ Who are the men ? ” 

She named them, and he mused darkly, his eyes on 
her face. “ I reckon I can’t wait to make their ac- 


THE OUTLAW 


153 


quaintance. I’m going on down the Green River to¬ 
day. I’m sorry to miss ’em. They must be a nice 
bunch — to leave two women alone this way.” 

He ate heartily, but with a nicety which betrayed 
better training than is usual to men in his position. 
He remained silent and in deep thought, though his 
eyes were often on Alice’s face. 

As he rose to go he said to Peggy: “ Would you 

mind doing up a little grub for me? I don’t know 
just when I ’ll strike another camp.” 

“ Why, of course! I ’ll be glad to. Do you have 
to go ? ” 

“ Yes, I must pull out,” he replied, and while she 
was preparing his lunch he rolled a blanket and tied 
it behind his saddle. At last he re-entered the cabin 
and, again advancing to Alice’s bedside, musingly re¬ 
marked : “ I hate to leave you women here alone. 

It does n’t seem right. Are you sure your party will 
return to-night? ” 

“ Either to-night or to-morrow. Professor Ward 
intends to climb Fremont Peak.” 

“ Then you won’t see him for three days.” His 
tone was that of one who communes with himself. 
“ I reckon I’d better stay till to-morrow. I don’t like 
the feeling of the air.” 

She explained that Gage, one of the guides, would 


154 THE OUTLAW 

return in case the professor wished to remain in the 
heights. 

“ Well, I 'll hang around till toward night, any¬ 
how." 

He went away for half an hour, and upon his return 
presented a cleanly shaven face and a much less savage 
look and bearing. He hovered about the door, ap¬ 
parently listening to Peggy’s chatter, but having eyes 
only for the wounded girl. He seized every slightest 
excuse to come in, and his voice softened and his man¬ 
ner changed quite as markedly, and at last, while Mrs. 
Adams was momentarily absent, he abruptly said: 

“ You are afraid of me; I can see it in your eyes. I 
know why. You think you know who I am." 

“ Yes; I’m sure of it." 

“ What makes you think so ? ’’ 

“ I saw your picture in the railway station." 

He regarded her darkly. “ Well, I trust you. You 
won’t give me away. I’m not so sure of her." He 
nodded his head toward the open door. 

“ What would be the good of my betraying you? ’’ 

“ Two thousand dollars’ reward is a big temptation." 

“ Nonsense! If I told — it would be for other rea¬ 
sons. If I were to betray your hiding-place it would 
be because society demands the punishment of crim¬ 
inals." 


THE OUTLAW 


155 

“ I’m not a criminal. I never lifted a cent from 
any man. I didn’t get a dollar from the express 
company — but I tried — I want you to know, any¬ 
way,” he continued, “ that I would n’t rob an individual 
— and I would n’t have tried this, only I was blind 
drunk and desperate. I needed cash, and needed it 
bad.” 

“ What did you need it for?” asked Alice, with a 
steady look. 

He hesitated, and a flush crept across his brown 
face. His eyes wavered. “ Well, you see, the old 
home was mortgaged — and mother was sick —” 

“ Oh, bosh! Tell me the truth,” she demanded. 
“ The papers said you did it for a girl. Why not be 
honest with me? ” 

“ I will,” he responded, impulsively. “ Yes, that’s 
right. I did it for a girl — and afterward, when I 
was on the run, what did she do? Threw me down! 
Told everything she knew — the little coyote — and 
here I am hunted like a wolf on account of it.” His 
face settled into savage lines for a moment. But even 
as he sat thus another light came into his eyes. His 
gaze took account of Alice’s lips and the delicate 
rounded whiteness of her neck and chin. Her like 
he had never met before. The girls he had known 
giggled; this one smiled. His sweetheart used slang 


156 THE OUTLAW 

and talked of cattle like a herder, but this woman’s 
voice, so sweet and flexible, made delightfully strange 
music to his ears. 

Peggy’s return cut short his confidence, and while 
she was in the cabin he sat in silence, his eyes always 
on the girl. He seized every opportunity to speak to 
her, and each time his voice betrayed increasing long¬ 
ing for her favor. 

Mrs. Adams, who had conceived a liking for him, 
ordered him about as freely as though he were a 
hired guide, and he made himself useful on the slight¬ 
est hint. 

Alice, on her part, was profoundly interested in him, 
and whenever her foot would permit her to think of 
anything else, she pitied him. In the madness of his 
need, his love, he had committed an act which made 
all the world his enemy, and yet, as she studied his 
form and expression, her heart filled with regret. He 
was very attractive in the Western way, with nothing 
furtive or evasive about him. 

With a directness quite equal to his own she ques¬ 
tioned him about his reckless deed. 

“ Why did you do it? ” she exclaimed in despair of 
his problem. 

“ I don’t know. Hanged if I do, especially now. 
Since seeing you I think I was crazy — crazy as a 


THE OUTLAW 


157 

loon. I f I , d done it for you, now, it would n’t have 
been so wild. You ’re worth a man’s life. I’d die 
for you.” 

This outburst of passion, so fierce and wild, thrilled 
the girl; she grew pale with comprehension of his mood. 
It meant that the sight of her lying there had replaced 
the old madness with a new one. She was unprepared 
for this furious outflaming of primitive admiration. 

“ You mustn’t talk like that to me,” she protested, 
as firmly as she could. 

He sensed her alarm. “ Don’t you be scared,” he 
said, gently. “ I did n’t mean to jar you. I only 
meant that I did n’t know such women as you were in 
the world. I’d trust you. You’ve got steady eyes. 
You’d stick by the man that played his whole soul 
for you, I can see that. I come of pretty good stock. 
I reckon that’s why you mean so much to me. You 
get hold of me in a way I can’t explain.” 

“ Why don’t you fly ? ” she asked him. “ Every 
minute you spend here increases your danger. The 
men may return at any moment.” 

“ That’s funny, too,” he answered, and a look of 
singular, musing tenderness fell over his face. “ I’d 
rather sit here with you and take my chances.” 

“ But you must not! You are imperiling your life 
for nothing.” 


THE OUTLAW 


158 

“ You ’re mistaken there. I’m getting something 
every minute — something that will stay with me all 
my life. After I leave you it does n’t matter. I came 
into the hills just naturally, the way the elk does. 
After that girl reported me, life did n’t count. Seeing 
you has changed me. It matters a whole lot to me 
this minute, and when I leave you it’s stormy sunset 
for me, sure thing.” 

Alice gazed upon him with steady eyes, but her 
bosom rose and fell with the emotion which filled her 
heart. She debated calling for Mrs. Adams, but 
there was something in the droop of the outlaw’s head, 
in the tone of his voice, which arrested her. However 
sudden and frenzied his admiration might seem 
to others, it was sincere and manly, of that she 
was persuaded. Nevertheless, she was deeply per¬ 
turbed. 

“ I wish you would go,” she entreated at last, huskily. 
“ I don’t want to see you taken. You have made your¬ 
self a criminal and I ought not to find excuses for you, 
but I do. You ’re so young. It does n’t seem as if 
you knew what you were doing. Why don’t you ride 
away into the wild north country and begin a new life 
somewhere? Can’t you escape to Canada? ” 

He seized eagerly upon her suggestion. “ Will you 
write to me if I do? ” 


THE OUTLAW 


159 


“ No, I cannot promise that.” 

“ Why can’t I play the ranger here and wait upon 
you till the men return ? ” 

“ Because Professor Ward read that placard with 
me. He will know you instantly. I wish you’d go. 
Gage may come at any moment now.” 

Peggy came in with a disturbed look. “ It looks like 
rain,” she announced; “ the clouds are settling down 
all over the peaks.” 

The outlaw sprang up and went to the door. “ It 
looked bad when I got up,” he said, as he studied the 
sky. “ I guess we ’re in for trouble. It may be 
snow.” 

His fears were soon realized. Rain began to fall 
in a thin drizzle, and at four o’clock the first faint 
flakes of snow began to flash amid the gray veils of 
the water-drops. The women looked at each other 
in alarm as the cabin’s interior darkened with the 
ominous shadow of the storm. 

“ I don’t like this a bit,” said Peggy, after a while. 
“ This is no mountain squall. I wish the men were 
here.” 

“ It can’t be anything that will last,” replied Alice. 
“ It is n’t time for the winter snows.” 

“ I know,” replied Peggy. “ But it’s snowing per¬ 
fect feather beds now, and no wind. Lucky this for- 


160 THE OUTLAW 

est-ranger is here. The men may get lost in this 
storm.” 

“ Mercy! Don’t speak of such a thing! ” exclaimed 
Alice; but she knew, just the same, that Ward and 
his party were high in the peaks, far, far above the 
cabin, and that the storm there would be proportion¬ 
ately fiercer. She listened with growing thankfulness 
to the outlaw’s blows upon the dry limbs of wood 
that he was chopping for the fire. He was very 
capable and would not desert them — of that she felt 
assured. 

As the man worked on, the women both came to 
keen realization of the serious view he took of the 
storm. He mounted his horse and with his rope 
dragged great bundles of fagots from the thickets. 
As he came up, laden with one of his bundles of hard- 
won fuel, Mrs. Adams asked: 

“ You don’t think it will keep this up, do you? ” 

“ You never can tell what will happen in these moun¬ 
tains. It does n’t generally snow much till later, but 
you can’t bank on anything in this range.” 

Alice called to him and he stepped inside. " What 
do you think we’d better do ? ” she asked. 

“ There is n’t a thing you can do, miss. It’s just 
a case of stick it out. It may let up by sundown; but, 
as it is, your party can’t get back to-night, and if you 


THE OUTLAW 161 

don’t mind I ’ll camp down just outside the door and 
keep the fire going.” 

“ You will be a comfort to us,” she replied, “ but I 
feel that — that you ought to be going. Is n’t it dan¬ 
gerous for you? I mean you will be shut in here.” 

“ If I’m shut in, others are shut out,” he answered, 
with a grim smile. “ My job is to keep fire.” With 
these words he returned to his work of breaking limbs 
from the dead firs. 

Alice said: “If it does turn out as this — this 
ranger says — if the storm keeps up, you must n’t let 
him sleep out in the snow.” 

“Of course not,” said Peggy. “ He can sleep in¬ 
side. I trust him perfectly —»and, besides, you have 
your revolver.” 

Alice smiled a little, wondering how Peggy’s trust 
would stand the strain of a fuller knowledge concern¬ 
ing their guardian’s stirring career. 


Ill 

In spite of her knowledge of the mountains and her 
natural intrepidity of character the wounded girl’s 
heart sank as the snow and the night closed down 
over the tiny cabin in its covert of firs. To be on foot 
in such gloom in the heart of such a wilderness, was 


THE OUTLAW 


162 

sufficiently awe-inspiring, but to be helpless on a hard 
bed was to feel the utter inconsequence of humankind. 
“ Suppose the storm blocks the trails so that the men 
cannot return for a week? What will we do for 
food? ” 

Each time she heard the outlaw deliver his burden 
of wood her heart warmed to him. He was now her 
comfort and very present stay. “If it should happen 
that the trails become impassable he alone will stand 
between us and death,” she thought. 

The outlaw came in to say, abruptly, “If you 
were n't hurt and if I were n’t in such a hurry I’d 
rather enjoy this.” 

He slashed his sombrero against his thigh as he 
spoke, and Mrs. Adams answered his remark without 
knowledge of its inner meaning. 

“ You must n’t think of sleeping outdoors to-night 
— Mr.-?” 

“ Smith. I belong to the big family, the Smiths,” 
he promptly replied. 

“ Why don’t you take away that improvised table 
by the wall and make your bed there ? ” 

“ We ’ll need the table,” he responded in a matter- 
of-fact tone. “ I ’ll just crawl under it. What's 
giving me most trouble is the question of grub. They 
did n’t leave you any too much, did they ? ” 



THE OUTLAW 


163 

“ But you can kill game, can’t you?” asked Peggy. 

“ We ’re pretty high up for elk, and the blue grouse 
are scarce this year, but I reckon I can jump a deer 
or a ground-hog. We won’t starve, anyway.” 

Alice perceived in his voice a note of exultation. 
He was glad of his reprieve, and the thought of being 
her protector, at least for the night, filled him with 
joy. She read his mind easily and the romance of this 
relationship stirred her own heart. The dramatic pos¬ 
sibilities of the situation appealed to her. At any mo¬ 
ment the men might return and force her into the role 
of defender. On the other hand, they might be con¬ 
fined for days together in this little cabin, and in this 
enforced intimacy Peggy was sure to discover his se¬ 
cret and his adoration. 

The little hovel was filled with the golden light of 
the blazing fagots, and through the open door Alice 
could see the feathery crystals falling in a wondrous, 
glittering curtain across the night. The stream roared 
in subdued voice as though oppressed by the snows, and 
the shadow of the fugitive as he moved about the 
fire had a savage, primal significance which awed the 
girl into silence. 

He was very deft in camp work, and cooked their 
supper for them almost as well as they could have done 
it themselves, but he refused to sit at the table with 


164 


THE OUTLAW 


Peggy. “ I ’ll just naturally stick to my slicker, if 
you don’t mind. I’m wet and my hands are too grimy 
to eat with a lady.” 

Alice continued to talk to him, always with an un¬ 
der-current of meaning which he easily read and ad¬ 
roitly answered. This care, this double meaning, drew 
them ever closer in spirit, and the girl took an unac¬ 
countable pleasure in it. 

After supper he took his seat in the open doorway, 
and the girl in the bunk looked upon him with softened 
glance. She had no fear of him now; on the con¬ 
trary, she mentally leaned upon him. Without him 
the night would be a terror, the dawn an uncertainty. 
The brave self-reliance of his spirit appeared in 
stronger light as she considered that for weeks he had 
been camping alone, and that but for this accident to 
her he would be facing this rayless wintry night in 
solitude. 

He began again to question her. “ I wish you’d tell 
me more about yourself,” he said, his dark eyes fixed 
upon her. “ I can’t understand why any girl like you 
should come up here with a bunch of rock-sharps. 
Are you tied up to the professor? ” 

If Peggy expected her patient to resent this ques¬ 
tion she must have been surprised, for Alice merely 
smiled as if at the impertinence of a child. 


THE OUTLAW 165 

Mrs. Adams replied: “ I can tell you that she is — 

and a very fortunate girl her friends think her.” 

He turned to her with unmoved face. “ You mean 
he ’s got money, I reckon.” 

“ Money and brains and good looks and a fine posi¬ 
tion.” 

“ That’s about the whole works, ain’t it — least¬ 
wise he will have it all when he gets you. A man 
like that does n’t deserve what he’s got. He’s a 
chump. Do you suppose I’d go off and leave you 
alone in a hole like this with a smashed leg? I’d 
never bring you into such a country, in the first place. 
And I certainly would n’t leave you just to study a 
shack of ice on the mountainside.” 

“ I urged him to go, and, besides, Peggy is mis¬ 
taken ; we ’re not engaged.” 

“ But he left you! That’s what sticks in my crop. 
He can’t be just right in his head. If I had any 
chance of owning you I’d never let you out of my 
sight. I would n’t take a chance. I don’t understand 
these city fellows. I reckon their blood is thinned 
with ice-water. If I had you I’d be scared every 
minute for fear of losing you. I’d be as dangerous 
to touch as a silver-tip. If I had any place to take you 
I’d steal you right now.” 

This was more than banter. Even Mrs. Adams per- 


THE OUTLAW 


166 

ceived the passion quivering beneath his easy, low- 
toned speech. He was in truth playing with the con¬ 
ception of seizing this half-smiling, half-musing girl 
whose helpless body was at once a lure and an inspira¬ 
tion. It was perfectly evident that he was profoundly 
stirred. 

And so was Alice. “ What/’ she dared ask her¬ 
self, “will become of this?” 


IV 

To the outlaw in the Rocky Mountain cabin in that 
stormy night it was in every respect the climax of his 
life. As he sat in the doorway, looking at the fire 
and over into the storm beyond, he realized that he 
was shaken by a wild, crude lyric of passion. Here 
was, to him, the pure emotion of love. All the beau¬ 
tiful things he had ever heard or read of girlhood, of 
women, of marriage, rose in his mind to make this 
night an almost intolerable blending of joy and sor¬ 
row, hope and despair. 

To stay time in its flight, to make this hour his own, 
to cheat the law, to hold the future at bay — these 
were the avid desire, the vague resolutions, of his brain. 
So sure as the day came this happiness would end. 
To-morrow he must resume his flight, resigning his 


THE OUTLAW 167 

new-found jewel into the hands of another. To this 
thought he returned again and again, each time with 
new adoration for the girl and added fury and hate 
against his relentless pursuers and himself. He did 
not spare himself! “Gad! what a fool I’ve been — 
and yet, if I had been less a fool I would not be here 
and I would never have met her.” He ended with a 
glance toward Alice. 

Then he arose, closed the door of the cabin, and 
stood without beside the fire, so that the women might 
prepare for bed. His first thought of suicide came to 
him. Why not wait with his love as long as possible 
— stay till the law’s hand was in the air above his 
head, uplifted to strike, and then, in this last moment, 
die with this latest, more glorious passion as climax 
to his career? To flee meant endless fear, torment. 
To be captured meant defeat, utter and final dismay. 

A knock upon the door startled him, and Peggy’s 
voice cut short his meditation. “You can come in 
now, Mr. Smith,” she said. 

The broad crystals were still falling thickly and 
the fire was hissing and spluttering around a huge root 
which he had rolled upon it. In its light the cabin 
stood hardly higher than a kennel, and yet it housed 
the woman whose glance had transformed his world 
into something mystical. A man of commonplace an- 


168 


THE OUTLAW 


cestry would have felt only an animal delight in shelter 
and warmth, but this youth was stirred to a spiritual 
exaltation. The girl’s bosom, the rounded beauty of 
her neck, appealed to him, but so also did the steady 
candor of her gaze and the sweet courage of her lips. 
Her helplessness roused his protective instinct, and 
her words, the sound of her voice, so precise, so alien- 
sweet, filled him with bitter sadness, and he re-entered 
the. house in such spirit of self-abasement as he had 
never known before. 

He lay down upon the hard floor in silence, his au¬ 
dacity gone, his reckless courage deep-sunk in gloomy 
foreboding. 

Alice, on her part, could not free her mind from 
the burden of his crime. He was so young, and so 
handsome, to be hunted like a noxious beast! She had 
at the moment more concern of him than of Ward, 
and in this lay a certain disloyalty. She sighed deeply 
as she thought of the outlaw resuming his flight next 
day. Would it not be better for him to sacrifice him¬ 
self to the vengeance of the state at once and so end 
it? What right had she to shield him from the law’s 
demand? “ He is a criminal, after all. He must pay 
for his rash act.” 

She could not sleep, and when he rose to feed the 
fire she softly asked, “ Does it still storm? ” 


THE OUTLAW 169 

“ No,” he answered in a tone that voiced disappoint¬ 
ment ; “ the sky is clear.” 

“ Is n’t that cheering! ” she exclaimed, still in the 
same hushed voice. 

“ For you,” he replied. “ For me it’s another 
story.” He felt the desire for a secret consultation 
which moved her, and on his way back to his corner 
he halted and fixed his eyes upon her in hungry ad¬ 
miration of her fire-lit face. Then he spoke. “ I 
should have pulled out before the storm quit. They 
can trail me now. But no matter; I’ve known you.” 

She still kept to ambiguous speech. “ Would n’t 
it be better to give up and take your — misfortune, and 
begin again? Professor Ward and I will do all we 
can to help you.” 

“ That’s mighty white of you,” he responded, slowly. 
“ But I can’t stand the thought of confinement. I’ve 
been free as an Injun all my life. Every day of the 
wind has been open to me. No; just as long as I can 
find a wild spot I must keep moving. If it comes to 
‘ hands up! ’ I take the short cut.” He tapped his 
revolver as he spoke. 

“ You must n’t do that,” she entreated. “ Promise 
me you won’t think of that! ” 

He made a stride toward her, but a movement of 
her companion checked him. 


170 


THE OUTLAW' 


“ Is it morning? ” Peggy sleepily asked. 

“ Not quite,” answered the outlaw, “ but it’s time 
for me to be moving. I ’d like to hear from you some¬ 
time,” he said to Alice, and his voice betrayed his 
sadness and tenderness. “ Where could I reach you ? ” 

She gave her address with a curious sense of wrong¬ 
doing. 

He listened intently. “ I ’ll remember that,” he 
said, “ when I’ve forgotten everything else. And 
now —” He reached his hand to her and she took it. 

“Poor boy! I’m sorry for you!” she whispered. 

Her words melted his heart. Dropping on his knees 
beside her bed, he pressed her fingers to his lips, then 
rose. “ I ’ll see you again — somewhere — some¬ 
time,” he said, brokenly. “ Good-by.” 

No sooner had the door closed behind the outlaw 
than Peggy rose in her place beside Alice and voiced 
her mystification. " Now what is the meaning of all 
that?” 

“ Don’t ask me,” replied the girl. “ I don’t feel 
like talking, and my foot is aching dreadfully. Can’t 
you get up and bathe it ? I hate to ask you — but it 
hurts me so.” 

Peggy sprang up and began to dress, puffing and 
whistling with desperation. As soon as she was 
dressed she ran to the door and opened it. All was 


THE OUTLAW 


171 

still, a world of green and white. “ The fire is almost 
out,” she reported, “ and I can see Mr. Smith’s horse’s 
tracks.” 


V 

It was about ten o’clock when a couple of horsemen 
suddenly rounded the point of the forest and rode into 
the clearing. One of them, a slender, elderly man 
with gray, curly beard and a skin like red leather, 
dismounted and came slowly to the door, and though 
his eyes expressed surprise at meeting women in such 
a place, he was very polite. 

“ Mornin’, ma’am,” he said, with suave inflection. 

“ Good morning,” Peggy replied. 

“ Fine snowy mornin’.” 

“ It is so.” She was a little irritated by the fixed 
stare of his round, gray eyes. 

He became more direct. “ May I ask who you are 
and how you happen to be here, ma’am ? ” 

“ You may. I’m Mrs. Adams. I came up here 
with my husband, Professor Adams.” 

“ Where is he?” 

“ He has gone up the trail toward Fremont. He is 
a botanist.” 

“ Is that his horse’s tracks ? ” 


THE OUTLAW 


172 

Alice called sharply, “ Peggy! ” 

Mrs. Adams turned abruptly and went in. 

The stranger turned a slow gaze upon his com¬ 
panion. 

“ Well, this beats me. Tears like we 're on the 
wrong trail, Bob. I reckon we ’ve just naturally over¬ 
hauled a bunch of tourists.” 

“ Better go in and see what ’s inside,” suggested the 
other man, slipping from his horse. 

“ All right. You stay where you are.” 

As he stepped to the door and rapped, Peggy opened 
it, but Alice took up the inquiry. 

“ What do you want?” she asked, imperiously. 

The man, after looking keenly about, quietly re¬ 
plied : “ I’m wonderin’ how you women come to be 

here alone, but first of all I want to know who made 
them tracks outside the door ? ” 

Alice ignored the latter part of his question and set 
about satisfying his wonder. “ We came up here with 
a geological survey, but my horse fell on my foot and 
I could n’t ride, so the men had to leave me behind —” 

“ Alone ? ” sharply interrogated the man. 

“ No; one man stayed.” 

“ What was his name? ” 

“ I don’t know. We called him Smith.” 

“ Was he the man that rode away this morning? ” 


THE OUTLAW 


173 

“ What does that matter to you ? ” asked the girl. 
“ Why are you so inquisitive? ” 

He maintained his calm tone of mild authority. 
“ I’m the sheriff of Uinta County, ma’am, and I’m 
looking for a man who’s been hiding out in this basin. 
I was trailin’ him close when the snow came on yes¬ 
terday, and I did n’t know but what these tracks was 
his.” 

Peggy turned toward Alice with an involuntary ex¬ 
pression of enlightenment, and the sheriff read it 
quickly. Slipping between the two women, he said: 

“ Jest a minute, miss. What sort of a looking man 
was this Smith?” 

Alice took up the story. “ He was rather small and 
dark — was n’t he, Peggy ? ” 

Peggy considered. “ I did n’t notice him particu¬ 
larly. Yes, I think he was.” 

The man outside called: “ Hurry up, Cap. It’s 

beginning to snow again.” 

The sheriff withdrew toward the door. “ You ’re 
both lying,” he remarked without heat, “ but it don’t 
matter. We ’ll mighty soon overhaul this man on the 
horse — whoever he is. If you’ve been harboring 
Hall McCord we ’ll have to take you, too.” With that 
threat as a farewell he mounted his horse and rode 
away. 


THE OUTLAW 


174 

Peggy turned to Alice. “ Did you know that young 
fellow was an outlaw ? ” 

“ Yes: I saw his picture and description on a placard 
in the railway station. I recognized him at once.” 

“ Why did n’t you tell me ? ” 

“ Well, I liked his looks, and, besides, I wanted to 
find out if he were really bad or only unfortunate.” 

“ What has he done? ” 

“ They say he held up a train! ” 

“Merciful Heavens! a train-robber! What’s his 
real name ? ” 

“ The name on the placard was Hall McCord.” 

“ And to think he was in the same room with us 
last night, and you were chumming with him! I can’t 
understand you. Are you sure he is the robber ? ” 

“ Yes. He confessed to having tried to rob the ex¬ 
press car.” 

“ He seemed such a nice fellow. How did he come 
to do it?” 

Alice concluded not to honor the other girl by bring¬ 
ing her into the discussion. “ Oh, it is hard to say. 
Need of money, I suppose. Poor boy, I pity him.” 

“ They ’ll get him, sure. They can follow his tracks 
as easy as anything. I don’t suppose I ought to say 
it, but I hope he ’ll get away. Don’t you? ” 

“ Yes, I do! ” was Alice’s fervent response. “ But 


THE OUTLAW 


175 

see! it’s snowing again. It may cover his trail.” 

Peggy went to the door and gazed long and keenly 
at the peaks. When she turned her face was solemn. 
“ Allie, this is getting pretty serious for us. If the 
men don’t come to-day they may get snowed up en¬ 
tirely.” 

Alice stifled a wail. “ Oh, if I were only able to 
walk I would n’t mind. I could help gather fuel and 
keep the fire going.” 

“ There’s plenty of wood for another day, but I’m 
worried about the men. Suppose they are up on that 
glacier? ” 

“ I’m not worried about them, but I know they 
are worrying about us. They ’ll surely start back this 
morning; but they may not be able to reach us till 
night.” 

The light of the morning had turned gray and 
feeble. The air was still and the forest soundless, 
save now and then when a snow-laden branch creaked 
with its burden. 

There was something majestic as well as menacing 
in this all-pervading solemn hush. 

Peggy went about her duties as cheerfully as she 
could, but with a wider knowledge of mountaineering 
than Alice had. She was at heart quite terrified. 
“ We ’re going to miss our nice outlaw,” she remarked. 


THE OUTLAW 


176 

“ He was so effective as a purveyor of wood.” Then 
she went to the door and looked out. “ That sheriff 
will never keep his trail,” she said. 

“ What ’s that ? ” suddenly asked Alice. 

Both listened. “I hear it!” whispered Peggy. 
“ It *s a horse — there! Some one spoke.” 

“ It’s Freeman! ” Alice joyously called out. “ Coo- 
hoo!” 

No one replied, and Peggy, rushing to the door, met 
the young outlaw, who appeared on the threshold with 
stern, set face. 

“ Who *s been here since I left? Your party? ” 

Peggy recoiled in surprise and alarm, and Alice 
cried out, “ Why did you come back?” 

“ Two men on horseback have been here since I 
left. Who were they?” His voice was full of 
haste. 

“ One of them said — he was the — the sheriff,” 
Alice replied, faintly. 

He smiled then, a kind of terrifying humor in his 
eyes. “ Well, the chances are he knew. They took 
my trail, of course, and left in a hurry. Expected to 
overhaul me on the summit. They’ve got their work 
cut out for ’em.” 

“ How did they miss you? ” the girl asked, huskily. 


THE OUTLAW 


177 


“ Well, you see, when I got up where I could view 
the sky I was dead sure we were in for a whooping big 
snow-storm, and I just could n’t leave you girls up 
here all alone, so I struck right down the canon in the 
bed of the creek — the short cut. I don’t like to back- 
trail, anyway; it’s a bad habit to get into. I like to 
leave as blind a trail as I can.” His face lightened 
up, grew boyish again. “ They ’re sure up against a 
cold proposition about now. They ’ll lose my track 
among the rocks, but they ’ll figure I’ve hustled right 
on over into Pine Creek, and if they don’t freeze to 
death in the pass they ’ll come out at Glover’s hay- 
meadow to-morrow night. How ’s the wood-pile hold¬ 
ing out ? ” 

“ Please go! ” cried Alice. “ Take your chance now 
and hurry away.” 

“ I’m not used to leaving women in such a fix. The 
moment I saw that blizzard was beginning all over 
again I turned back.” 

“ You have n’t had any breakfast? ” said Peggy. 

“ Nothing to speak of,” he replied, dryly. “ I 
was n’t thinking of breakfast when I pulled out.” 

“ I ’ll get you some.” 

Alice could not throw off the burden of his danger. 
“ What will you do when my people return? ” 


THE OUTLAW 


178 

“ I don’t know — trust to luck.” 

“ You are very foolish. They are certain to 
to-day.” 

“ They won’t know who I am if you women 
give me away.” 

“ I’m sure Freeman — Professor Ward — 
know you, for he also saw the placard.” 

“ That’s no sign. Suppose he does — mayb 
won’t think it is his job to interfere. Anyway' 
here his voice became decisive —“ I won’t leave y 1 
such a fix as this.” His eyes spoke to her of hat 
which his tongue could not utter. “ I wanted a 
cuse to come back, anyway,” he concluded. “ No lat¬ 
ter what comes now, my job is here to protect yoi. 

She did not rebuke him, and Peggy — though he 
wondered at his tone — was too grateful for his es- 
ence even to question Alice’s motive in permitting ,ch 
remarks. 

As for Alice, she felt herself more and mor in¬ 
volved in the tangled skein of his mysterious life. His 
sudden and reckless abandonment of the old love which 
had ruined him, and the new and equally irrational re-> 
gard which he now professed for her, filled her with a 
delicious marveling. 

He appealed to a woman’s imagination. He had the 
spice of the unknown. In her relationship with \ ^ard 


THE OUTLAW 


179 


was no danger, no mystery — his courtship nar- 
escaped being commonplace. She had accepted 
a entions and expected to marry him, and yet the 
ht of the union produced, at its warmest, merely 
v of comfort, a sense of security, whereas the hint 
being loved and protected by this Rob Roy of the 
hills, this reckless Rough Rider of the wilderness, was 
inst' ct with romance. Of course his devotion was a 
craz folly, and yet, lying there in her rough bunk, with 
an i penetrable wall of snow shutting out the rest of 
the orld, it was hard not to feel that this man and 
ture had become an inescapable part of her life 
>art which grew in danger and in charm from 
hou to hour. 

1 two miles above the level of her own home, 
' mded by peaks unscalably wild and lonely, de- 
by those who should care for her, was it strange 
he should return this man’s adoring gaze with 
hing of the primal woman’s gratitude and sub- 
ni m? 

e noon darkened into dusk as they talked, slowly, 
long pauses, and one by one the stirring facts 
e rover’s life came out. From his boyhood he 
lways done the reckless thing. He had known 
n< traint till, as a member of the Rough Riders, he 
d a partial obedience to his commanders. When 


180 THE OUTLAW 

the excitement of the campaigns was over he had de¬ 
serted and gone back to the round-up wagon and the 
campfire. 

In the midst of his confidences he maintained a re¬ 
serve about his family which showed more self-mas¬ 
tery than anything else about him. That he was the 
black sheep of an honorable flock became increasingly 
evident. He had been the kind of lad who finds in the 
West a fine field for dare-devil adventure. And yet 
there were unstirred depths in the man. He was 
curious about a small book which Alice kept upon her 
bed, and which she read from time to time with serene 
meditation on her face. 

“What is that?” he asked. 

“ My Bible.” 

“ Can I see it? ” 

“ Certainly.” 

He took it carefully and read the title on the back, 
then turned a few of the leaves. “ I’m not much on 
reading,” he said, “ but I’ve got a sister that sends me 
tracts, and the like.” He returned to the fly-leaf. 
“ Is this your name? ” 

“ Yes.” 

“'Alice Mansfield/” he read; “beautiful name! 
‘ New York City ’! That ’s pretty near the other side 
of the world to me.” He studied the address with in- 


THE OUTLAW 181 

tent look. “ I ’d like to buy this book. How much 
will you take for it? ” 

“ I ’ll trade it for your weapon,” sbe replied. 

He looked at her narrowly. “ You mean some¬ 
thing by that. I reckon I follow you. No, I can’t 
do that — not now. If I get into business over the 
line I ’ll disarm, but in this country a fellow needs to 
be protected. I want this book! ” 

“ For the fly-leaf?” 

He smiled in return. “ You’ve hit it.” 

She hesitated. “I’ll give you the book if you’ll 
promise to read it.” 

He clapped the covers together and put the volume 
in his pocket. “ It’s mine! I ’ll read every word of 
it, if it takes an age, and here’s my hand on it.” 

She gave him her hand, and in this clasp something 
came to her from his clutching fingers which sobered 
her. She drew her hand away hastily and said: “ If 

you read that book — and think about it — it will 
change your whole world.” 

He, too, lost his brightness. “ Well, I’m not so 
anxious to keep up this kind of life. But if anybody 
changes me it will be you.” 

“Hush!” she warned with lifted finger. 

He fell back, and after a little silence went out to 
wait upon the fire. 


THE OUTLAW 


182 

“ It seems to me/’ said Peggy, reprovingly, “ that 
you ’re too gracious with this mountaineer; he ’s get¬ 
ting presumptuous.” 

“ He does n’t mean to be. It’s his unsophisticated 
way. Anyhow, we can’t afford to be captious to our 
host.” 

“ That’s true,” admitted Peggy. 

The night shut down with the snow still falling, but 
with a growing chill in the air. 

“ The flakes are finer,” the outlaw announced, as he 
came in a little later. “ That is a good sign. It is 
growing colder and the wind is changing. It will 
pinch hard before sun-up, and the worst of it, there’s 
no way to warm this cabin. We can’t have the door 
open to-night. I’m worried about you,” he said to 
Alice. “If only those chumps had left a man-size 
ax!” 

The two women understood that this night was to 
bring them into closer intimacy with the stranger than 
before. He could not remain outdoors, and though 
they now knew something of his desperate character, 
they had no fear of him. He had shown his chivalry. 
No one could have been more considerate of them, for 
he absented himself at Peggy’s request instantly and 
without suggestion of jocularity, and when he came in 
and found them both in bed he said: 


THE OUTLAW 


183 

“ I reckon I ’ll not make down to-night — you ’ll 
need all your blankets before morning”; and there¬ 
upon without weighing their protests, proceeded to 
spread the extra cover over them. 

Alice looked up at him in the dim light of the candle 
and softly asked: “ What will you do? You will 
suffer with cold! ” 

“ Don’t worry about me; I’m an old campaigner. 
I still have a blanket to wrap around my shoulders. 
I ’ll snooze in a corner. If you hear me moving 
around don’t be worried; I’m hired to keep the fire 
going even if it does n’t do us much good inside.” 

The chill deepened. The wind began to roar, and 
great masses of snow, dislodged from the tall trees 
above the cabin, fell upon its roof with sounds like 
those of soft, slow footfalls. Strange noises of creak¬ 
ing and groaning and rasping penetrated to Alice’s 
ears, and she cowered half in fear, half in joy of her 
shelter and her male protector. Men were fine ani¬ 
mals for the wild. 

She fell asleep at last, seeing her knight’s dim form 
propped against the wall, wrapped in a blanket Indian- 
wise, his head bowed over the book she had given him, 
a candle smoking in his hand. 

She woke when he rose to feed the fire, and the 
current of cold air which swept in caused her to cover 


i8 4 THE OUTLAW 

her mouth with the blanket. He turned toward her. 

“ It’s all over for sure, this time,” he said. “ It ’s 
cold and goin’ to be colder. How are you standing it ? 
If your feet are cold I can heat a stone. How is the 
hurt foot ? ” He drew near and looked down upon her 
anxiously. 

“ Very much easier, thank you.” 

“ I’m mighty glad of that. I wish-1 could take the 
pain all on myself.” 

“ You have troubles of your own,” she answered, as 
lightly as she could. 

“ That’s true, too,” he agreed in the same tone. 
“ So many that a little one more or less would n’t 
count.” 

“ Do you call my wound little ? ” 

“ I meant the foot was little —” 

She checked him. 

“ I did n’t mean to make light of it. It sure is 
no joke.” He added, “ I’ve made a start on the 
book.” 

“ How do you like it? ” 

“ I don’t know yet,” he answered, and. went back to 
his corner. 

She snuggled under her warm quilts again, remorse¬ 
ful, yet not daring to suggest a return of the blanket 
he had lent. When she woke again he was on his feet, 


THE OUTLAW 185 

swinging his arms silently. His* candle had gone out, 
but a faint light was showing in the room. 

“ Is it morning? ” she asked. 

“ Just about,” he replied, stretching like a cat. 

The dawn came gloriously. The sun in far-splash¬ 
ing splendor slanted from peak to peak, painting purple 
shadows on the snow and warming the boles of the tall 
trees till they shone like fretted gold. The jays cried 
out as if in exultation of the ending of the tempest, 
and the small stream sang over its icy pebbles with 
resolute cheer. It was a land to fill a poet with awe 
and ecstatic praise — a radiant, imperial, and merci¬ 
less landscape. Trackless, almost soundless, the moun¬ 
tain world lay waiting for the alchemy of the sun. 

VI 

The morning was well advanced when a far, faint 
halloo broke through the silence of the valley. The 
ranger stood like a statue, while Peggy cried out: 

“ It’s one of our men! ” 

Alice turned to the outlaw with anxious face. 
“ If it’s the sheriff stay in here with me. Let me 
plead for you. I want him to know what you ’ve done 
for us.” 

The look that came upon his face turned her cold 


186 THE OUTLAW 

with fear. “ If it is the sheriff —” He did not finish, 
but she understood. 

The halloo sounded nearer and the outlaw’s face 
lightened. “ It’s one of your party. He is coming 
up from below.” 

Impatiently they waited for the new-comer to ap¬ 
pear, and though he seemed to draw nearer at every 
shout, his progress was very slow. At last the man 
appeared on the opposite bank of the stream. He was 
covered with snow and stumbling along like a man half 
dead with hunger and fatigue. 

“ Why, it’s Gage! ” exclaimed Peggy. 

It was indeed the old hunter, and as he drew near 
his gaunt and bloodless face was like that of a starved 
and hunted animal. His first word was an anxious in¬ 
quiry, “ How are ye? ” 

“ All well,” Peggy answered. 

“ And the crippled girl ? ” 

“ Doing nicely. Thanks to Mr. Smith here, we did 
not freeze. Are you hungry?” 

The guide looked upon the outlaw with glazed, pro¬ 
truding eyes. “Hungry? I’m done. I’ve been 
wallerin’ in the snow all night and I’m just about all 
in.” 

“ Where are the others? ” called Alice from her bed. 

Gage staggered to the door. “ They ’re up at tim- 


THE OUTLAW 


187 

ber-line. I left them day before yesterday. I tried to 
get here, but I lost my bearin’s and got on the wrong 
side o’ the creek. Tears like I kept on the wrong side 
o’ the hog-back. Then my horse gave out, and that set 
me afoot. I was plum scared to death about you 
folks. I sure was.” 

Peggy put some food before him and ordered him 
into silence. “ Talk later,” she said. 

The outlaw turned to Alice. “ That explains it. 
Your Professor Ward trusted to this man to take care 
of you and stayed in camp. You can’t blame him.” 

Gage seemed to have suddenly become old, almost 
childish. “ I never was lost before,” he muttered, 
sadly. “ I reckon something must have went wrong in 
my head. Tears like I’m gettin’ old and foolish.” 

Alice exchanged glances with the outlaw. It was 
plain that he was in no danger from this dazed and 
weakened old man who could think of nothing but 
the loss of his sense of direction. 

As the day advanced the sun burned clear. At noon 
it was warm enough to leave the door open, and Alice, 
catching glimpses of the flaming world o.f silver and 
purple and gold, was filled with a desire to quit her 
dark corner. 

“ I’m going to get up! ” she exclaimed. “ I won’t 
lie here any longer.” 


188 


THE OUTLAW 


“ Don’t try it! ” protested Peggy. 

“ I’m going to do it! ” she insisted. “ I can hobble 
to the door if you help me.” 

“ I ’ll carry you,” said the outlaw. “ Wrap her up 
and I ’ll get her a seat.” 

And so, while Mrs. Adams wrapped her patient in 
a blanket, the outlaw dragged one of the rough, ax- 
hewn benches to the door and covered it with blankets. 
He put a stone to heat and then re-entered just as 
Alice, supported by Peggy, was setting foot to the floor. 
Swiftly, unhesitatingly, and very tenderly he put his 
arms about her and lifted her to the bench in the door¬ 
way before the fire. 

It was so sweet to feel that wondrous body in his 
arms. His daring to do it surprised her, but her own 
silent acquiescence, and the shiver of pleasure which 
came with the embarrassment of it, confused and trou¬ 
bled her. 

“ That’s better,” he said as he dropped to the ground 
and drew the blankets close about her feet. “ I ’ll 
have a hot stone for you in a minute.” 

He went about these ministrations with an inward 
ecstasy which shone in his eyes and trembled in his 
voice. But as she furtively studied his face and ob¬ 
served the tremor of his hands in tender ministration 
she lost all fear of him. 


THE OUTLAW 


189 

After three days in her dark corner of the hut the 
sunshine was wondrously inspiring to the girl, although 
the landscape on which she gazed was white and wild 
as December. It was incredible that only a few hours 
lay between the flower-strewn valley of her accident 
and this silent and desolate, yet beautiful, wilderness 
of snow. And so, as she looked into the eyes of the 
outlaw, it seemed as though she had known him from 
spring to winter, and her wish to help him grew with 
every hour of their acquaintanceship. 

She planned his defense before Ward and Adams. 
“ When they know how kind and helpful he has been 
they can but condone his one rash deed,” she argued 
in conclusion. 

He was sitting at her feet, careless of time, the law, 
content with her nearness, and mindful only of her 
comfort, when a distant rifle-shot brought him to his 
feet with the swiftness of the startled stag. 

“ That’s your expedition,” he said, “ or some one 
who needs help.” 

Again the shots rang out, one, two, three — one, 
two, three. It’s a signal! It’s your party! ” 

Peggy uttered a cry of joy and rushed outside, but 
Alice turned an unquiet gaze on the outlaw. “ You’d 
better fly! ” 

“ What is the use ? ” he answered, bitterly. “ The 


190 


THE OUTLAW 


snow is so deep there is no show to cross the range, 
and my horse is weak and hungry.” 

Gage appeared at the door. “ Lemme take your 
gun, stranger; I want to answer the signal.” 

“ Where ’s your own? ” 

“ I left it on my horse,” the old man answered, 
sheepishly. 

The young fellow looked at Alice with a keen glit¬ 
ter in his eyes. “ I ’ll make answer myself,” he said; 
“ I’m very particular about my barkers.” 

Alice, as she heard his revolver’s answering word 
leap into the silent air and bound and rebound along 
the cliffs, was filled with a sudden fear that the sheriff 
might be guided back by the sound — and this indeed 
the fugitive himself remarked as he came back to his 
seat beside her. 

“ If he’s anywhere on this side of the divide he ’ll 
sure come back. But I’ve done my best. The Lord 
God Almighty has dropped the snow down here and 
shut me in with you, and I’m not complaining.” 

There was no answer to be made to this fatalism of 
utterance, and none to the worship of his eyes. 

“ Lift me up! ” commanded Alice; “ I want to look 
out and see if I can see anybody.” 

The outlaw took her in his arms, supporting her in 
the threshold in order that she might see over the vast 


THE OUTLAW 


191 

sea of white. But no human being was to be seen. 

“Take me back — inside,” Alice said to the man 
who had her in his arms. “ I feel cold here.” 

Once again, and with a feeling that it was, perhaps, 
for the last time, he carried her back to her bench and 
re-enveloped her in her blankets. 

“ Stay here with me now,” she whispered to him, as 
she looked up into his face. 

And the outlaw, filled with gladness and pride, threw 
himself on the floor beside her. 


VII 

The signal pistol-shots came nearer and nearer, but 
very slowly; and as the outlaw sat beside Alice’s 
couch he took her Bible from his pocket and said: 

“ I made a stab at reading this last night.” 

She smiled. “ I saw you. How did you like it?” 

“ I did n’t exactly get aboard someway.” 

“ What was the trouble ? ” 

“ I guess it was because I kept thinking of you — 
and my own place in the game. Three days ago I 
did n’t care what became of me, but now I want a 
chance. I don’t see any chance coming my way, but 
if I had I’d make use of it.” He looked at her a 
moment in silence, then with sudden intensity broke 


192 


THE OUTLAW 


forth. “Do you know what you mean to me? 
When I look at your face and eyes I’m hungry for 
you.” 

She shrank from him and called to Mrs. Adams. 

He went on. “ Oh, you need n’t be afraid. I just 
wanted to say it, that’s all. If there was only some 
other way to straighten myself — but I can’t go to 
jail. I can’t stand up to be clipped like a poodle- 
dog, and put on striped clothing and walk lock-step 
— I can’t do it! They ’ll put me in for ten years. 
I’d be old when I got out.” He shuddered. “ No, 
I won’t do that! I’d rather die here in the hills.” 

She grew white in sympathy. “ It is a frightful 
price to pay for one insane act, and yet — crime 
should be punished.” 

“ I’m getting my punishment now,” he replied, 
with darkly brooding glance. “ There’s a good old 
man and two women, my sisters, waiting for me down 
the slope. If I could reach home I’d try to live 
straight, but it’s a long and dangerous trail between 
here and there.” 

Peggy now ran into the cabin. “ It’s the expedi¬ 
tion,” she announced. “ I can see Freeman.” 

" I reckon this is where I get off,” said the outlaw 
in a tone of mingled relief and dismay. 

“No, no!” Alice entreated. “Stay till Freeman 


THE OUTLAW 


193 

comes. He will help you. Let me explain to him. 
I know he will not betray you.” 

He looked at her again with that intent, longing 
worship in his eyes, and answered, “ I accept the 
chance for the sake of one more hour with you.” 

The outlaw stepped to the door, and he saw a man 
at the head of his train mid-leg deep in snow, leading 
his horse, breaking the way for his followers, who 
were on foot, crawling, stumbling, and twisting 
among the down-timber, unmindful of the old trail. 

At sight of that big and resolute leader, with flow¬ 
ing black beard and ruddy face, the outlaw was filled 
with jealous sadness. To find Ward a man of superb 
physical prowess, the kind that measures peaks for 
the fun of it, was disturbing, and without defining his 
feeling he was plunged into melancholy musing. And 
when later Ward entered, and, stooping over the couch, 
kissed Alice, the end of his idyl seemed to him an¬ 
nounced. 

In the bustle of the moment, in the interchange of 
anxious, hurried inquiries, the outlaw stood aside in 
the corner, unnoticed, till Alice caught Ward’s arm 
and said: 

? “ Freeman, this is Mr. Smith, to whom we owe a 

great deal. He has taken the utmost care of us. We 
would have frozen but for him.” 


194 


THE OUTLAW 


Ward shook hands with the outlaw, but wonder- 
ingly asked of Alice, “ But where was Gage? ” 

The outlaw answered, “ Gage got lost and only 
turned up a couple of hours ago.” 

Ward turned to Alice in horror. “ Good Lord! 
And you were here alone — crippled — in this 
storm ? ” 

“ No — that’s what I’m telling you. Mr. Smith 
came and took care of us. He brought our wood, he 
cooked for us, he kept our fire going. He gave up 
his bed, even his blankets, for us. You should be 
very generous to him.” 

Ward again reached a hearty hand. “ I ’m tre¬ 
mendously obliged to you.” 

The outlaw quailed under all this praise. “ There 
was mighty little to do,” he answered. “ I only 
shared my fire with them.” 

Ward studied him closer. “ Have n’t we met be¬ 
fore?” 

“ No, I reckon not.” 

“ I’m quite sure IVe see you somewhere. What 
are you doing up in here? ” 

Alice interposed. “ What are we going to do ? ” 

Ward turned to the outlaw. “ What would you 
advise ? I’ve only had one idea, and that was to 
reach this cabin. Now what would you do?” 


THE OUTLAW 


195 


The outlaw was ready. “ I would send a part of 
the men with the horses down the valley to grass and 
I ’d wait here till Miss Mansfield is able to ride.” 

“ Will this snow go off? ” 

“ That’s my notion.” 

“ It’s certain we can’t camp here — the horses 
must have grass.” 

“ I ’ll be able to ride in a day or two,” Alice said, 
bravely. 

“We could frame up a portable bed and carry 
you>” suggested the outlaw; “ but it can’t be done to¬ 
night, so you’d better send your outfit down to the 
marsh to camp. The horses are worn out and so are 
the men.” 

“ Will you guide them to grass and help them find 
shelter ? ” 

The outlaw hesitated for an instant, and Alice in¬ 
terposed: “No, no! Let Gage do that. I want Mr. 
Smith to remain here.” 

Ward perceived in her entreaty something of 
anxiety and fear, and after the men and horses had 
started down the slope he turned to the outlaw and 
said: “I’m mighty grateful to you, Mr. Smith. It 
must have surprised you to find these women here.” 

The outlaw dryly replied, “ It did! ” 

Alice added: “ It was in the middle of the night, 


THE OUTLAW 


196 

too; but Mr. Smith was very nice about it. He slept 
out-doors without a word of complaint. ,, 

Ward had figured the situation to conclusion: 
“ Smith is a poacher/’ and though he had a savage 
dislike of these illicit game-slaughterers, he could not 
but be glad of the presence of this particular outlaw, 
and resolved to overlook his trade in gratitude for 
his cabin and service. 

The outlaw helped Adams and Ward to clear away 
the snow for a tent, and Alice, seeing the three men 
thus amicably joined in her defense, could not find it 
in her heart to condemn one of them as a criminal. 
Here in the white isolation of the peaks the question 
of crime and its punishment became personal. To 
have this man’s fate in her hand was like grasping the 
executioner’s sword for herself. 

“ If women had to punish criminals themselves, 
with their own hand,” she asked, “ how many of them 
would do it?” 

Peggy came in and whispered to her: “ No one 
else seems to have recognized him. He may get away 
safely. I hope he will. Shall we tell the men who 
he is?” 

“ Yes, we shall have to do that soon, but I’m afraid 
they won’t take the sentimental view of him that we 


THE OUTLAW 


197 

do. I tremble to think of what they will do when they 
know.” 

Ward explained to Adams: “ Our friend Smith 
here is a poacher — but as our account stands I don't 
feel it my duty to report him, do you?” 

“ No; Peggy tells me he has acted like a gentleman 
all through.” 

In this spirit they made themselves comfortable 
for the night. 

The sun set gloriously, but the air bit ever sharper, 
and while Peggy went about her cooking, assisted 
by her husband and the outlaw, Alice pulled Ward 
down to her bedside and hurriedly began: 

“ You remember that placard we read in the sta¬ 
tion — the one about the train-robber ? ” 

" Yes!” 

“ Well, this is the man — our Mr. Smith.” 

Ward looked at her a moment with reflective eyes, 
then exclaimed: “ You ’re right! I thought I’d seen 
him somewhere.” 

“ And the sheriff is after him. He was here yes¬ 
terday morning.” 

“ Here?” 

“ Yes. You see, Mr. Smith stayed with us till he 
thought the storm was over, then rode away, intend- 


THE OUTLAW 


198 

ing to cross the divide, but when the snow began 
again he turned back. He said he could n’t leave us 
alone. He left us just before dawn, and four or five 
hours afterward the sheriff came. Of course he saw 
the poor fellow’s trail and instantly set off after him.” 

“ But why did n’t they meet? ” 

“ Because Mr. Smith came back a different way 
and then the blizzard came on and covered up his 
tracks. He thinks the sheriff has gone on over the 
divide. You must help him, Freeman. Help him to 
get away and find some way to give him a start. No¬ 
body could have been more considerate, and I can’t 
see him taken by these cold-blooded men who want 
that two thousand dollars’ reward. He really could 
have escaped, only for us. He came back to protect 
us.” 

Ward pondered. “ The problem is not so easy 
of solution. A train robbery is a pretty serious matter. 
I’m very grateful to him, but to connive at his escape 
is itself a punishable act. Why did you tell me? I 
could have passed it over—” 

“ Because I’m afraid the sheriff may come back 
at any moment.” 

Ward’s brow was troubled. “ I could ignore his 
deed and pretend not to know who he is, but definitely 
to assist a bandit to escape is a very serious matter.” 


THE OUTLAW 


199 

“ I know it is; but remember he gave up his chance 
to cross the divide in order to keep us from suffering.” 

“ I wish you had n’t told me,” he repeated, almost 
in irritation. “If the sheriff only keeps on over the 
range Smith can take care of himself.” 

As the outlaw re-entered the cabin Alice acknowl¬ 
edged in him something worth a woman to love. In 
the older man was power, security, moral, mental, and 
physical health, the qualities her reason demanded in 
a husband; but in the other was grace and charm, 
something wildly admirable. He allured as the war¬ 
rior, intrepid and graceful, allured the maiden, as the 
forest calls the householder. Something primordial 
and splendid and very sweet was in her feeling to¬ 
ward him. There could be no peaceful wedlock 
there, no security of home, no comfort, only the ex¬ 
quisite thrill of perilous union, the madness of a few 
short weeks — perhaps only a few swift days of self¬ 
surrender, and then, surely, disaster and despair. To 
yield to him was impossible, and yet the thought of 
it was tantalizingly sweet. 

When she looked toward Ward she perceived her¬ 
self sitting serenely in matronly grace behind a shin¬ 
ing coffee-urn in a well-ordered highly civilized break¬ 
fast-room, facing a most considerate husband who 
nevertheless was able to read the morning paper in 


200 


THE OUTLAW 


her presence. When she thought of life with the 
outlaw all was dark, stormy, confused, and yet the 
way was lit by his adoring eyes. A magical splendor 
lay in the impulse. His love, sudden as it seemed, 
was real — she was certain of that. She felt the 
burning power, the conjury of its flame, and it made 
her future with Ward, at the moment, seem dull and 
drab. 

“ Why, why could not such a man and such a pas¬ 
sion come with the orderly and the ethical ? ” she 
asked herself. 

At the best he was fitted only for the mine or the 
ranch, and the thought of life in a lonely valley, even 
with his love to lighten it, made her shudder. On one 
side she was a very practical and far-seeing woman. 
The instant she brought her reason to bear on the 
problem she perceived that any further acquaintance 
with this man was dangerous. They must part here 
at this moment, and yet she could not let him go with¬ 
out in some way making him feel her wish to help 
him. 


VIII 

Ward and the outlaw were discussing plans for 
getting out of the basin when Adams came in to say, 


THE OUTLAW 


201 


“ A couple of other weary wanderers are turning up.” 

“ The sheriff! ” instantly exclaimed Alice, her face 
whitening in swift dismay. 

In that moment the forester was transformed. 
With a weapon in his hand he stood aside, his eyes on 
the door, a scowl of battle on his face. He resembled 
a wolf with bared fangs ready to die desperately. 

Ward, quick to read his purpose, interposed. 
“ Wait! ” he commanded. “ Stay here; I ’ll see them. 
Don’t be rash.” 

As he passed out into the firelight the outlaw, 
without relaxing his vigilance, said in a low voice, 
“ Well, girl, I reckon here’s where I say good night.” 

“ Don’t resist,” she pleaded. “ Don’t fight, please! 
Please! What is the use ? Oh, it’s too horrible! 
If you resist they will kill you! ” 

There was no fear in his voice as he replied: 
" They may not; I’m handy with my gun.” 

She was breathless, chilled by the shadow of the 
impending tragedy. “ But that would be worse. To 
kill them would only stain your soul the deeper. You 
must not fight! ” 

“ It’s self-defense.” 

“ But they are officers of the law.” 

" No matter; I will not be taken alive.” 

She moaned in her distress, helplessly wringing 


202 THE OUTLAW 

her hands. “O God! Why should I be witness of 
this ? ” 

“ You won’t be. If this is the sheriff I am going 
to open that door and make a dash. What happens 
will happen outside. You need not see it. I’m sorry 
you have to hear it. But I give you my word — if 
you must hear something I will see to it that you 
hear as little as possible.’ , 

The latch clicked — he stepped back, and again 
stood waiting, silent, rigid, ready to act, murderous 
in design. 

Mrs. Adams entered quickly, and, closing the door 
behind her, hurriedly whispered: “ It’s the sheriff. 
Hide! The men will hold them as long as they 
can. Hide! ” 

The outlaw looked about and smiled. “ Where ? ” 
he asked, almost humorously. “ I’m not a squirrel.” 

“ Under the bunk. See, there is room.” 

He shook his head. “ No, I refuse to crawl. I 
won’t sneak. I never have. I take ’em as they 
come.” 

“ For my sake,” pleaded Alice. “ I can’t bear 
to see you killed. Hide yourself. Go to the door,” 
she said to Peggy. “ Don’t let them in. Tell Free¬ 
man —” She rose and stood unsteadily, forgetful of 
her own pain. 


THE OUTLAW 


203 

Mrs. Adams urged her to lie down, but she would 
not. The moments passed in suspense almost too 
great to be endured. 

“ Listen !” commanded the outlaw. “ They ’re 
coming in.” 

As they harkened Ward’s voice rose clearly. 
“ You can’t miss the camp,” he was saying, as if speak¬ 
ing to some one at a distance. “Just keep the trail 
in the snow and you ’ll find them. I’m sorry we can’t 
put you up — but you see how it is.” 

“ They ’re going! ” exclaimed Alice. “ Thank 
God, they ’re going! ” 

“ It can’t be they ’ll go without searching the 
shack,” the fugitive ‘muttered, in no measure relaxing 
hi*s attitude of watchful menace. “ They ’re playing 
a game on us.” 

Again the latch clicked, and this time it was Ward 
who confronted the outlaw’s revolver mouth. 

“ It’s all right,” Ward called, instantly understand¬ 
ing the situation. “ They ’re gone. The old man 
was about played out, for they’ve been fighting snow 
all day, but I told him we could n’t take care of them 
here and they have gone on down to the camp. He 
thinks you got over the divide. You are all right for 
the present.” 

“ They ’ll come back,” replied the other. “ It only 


204 


THE OUTLAW 


puts the deal off a few hours. They ’ll return, trail¬ 
in’ the whole camp after them. What can I do ? My 
horse is down there in the herd.” 

“ That’s bad,” exclaimed Ward. “ I wonder if I 
could get him for you ? ” 

“ If I had him he’s weak and hungry, and the high 
places are feet deep in drifts. It does n’t signify. 
I’m corralled any way you look at it, and the only 
thing left is to fight.” 

“ There’s our trail to the glacier,” Ward musingly 
suggested; “ it’s a pretty deep furrow — you might 
make it that way.” 

A spark of light leaped into the man’s eyes. “ How 
far up does it run ? Where does it end ? ” 

“ In Glacier Basin, just at timber-line.” 

The outlaw pondered, speaking his thoughts aloud. 
“ From there across to the Indian reservation there 
isn’t a wolf track. ... It’s a man’s job crossing 
there, almost sure death, but it’s my only show.” He 
had replaced his weapon in his belt and was weigh¬ 
ing his chance, his eyes fixed on Alice’s face. To 
leave this shelter, this warm circle of light, this sweet 
girlish presence, and plunge into the dark, the cold, 
and the snow, was hard. No one but a man of uncon¬ 
querable courage would have considered it. This 
man was both desperate and heroic. “ It’s my only 


THE OUTLAW 


205 

chance and I ’ll take it,” he said, drawing his breath 
sharply. “ I ’ll need your prayers,” he added, grimly, 
with eyes that saw only the girl. “ If I fail you ’ll 
find me up there. I carry my sleeping-powder with 
me.” He touched his revolver as he spoke. 

Alice’s mind, sweeping out over that desolate ex¬ 
panse, had a moment’s vision of him as he would ap¬ 
pear toiling across those towering cliffs, minute as a 
fly, and her heart grew small and sick. 

“ Why don’t you stay and take your lawful punish¬ 
ment? ” she asked. “ You will surely perish up there 
in the cold. Wait for sunlight at least.” 

“ I’m ready to stay and to die here, near you,” he 
replied, with a significant glance. 

“ No, no, not that! ” she cried out. “ Talk to him, 
Freeman; persuade him to give himself up. I’ve 
done my best to influence him. Don’t let him uselessly 
sacrifice himself.” 

Ward perceived something hidden in her voice, 
some emotion which was more than terror, deeper 
than pity, but his words were grave and kindly. “ It 
is a frightful risk, young man, but the trail to the 
glacier is your only open road. The sheriff is tired. 
Even if he finds out that you are here he may not 
come back to-night. He will know you cannot escape. 
You can’t stir without leaving a telltale mark. If 


206 THE OUTLAW 

you could only get below the snow on the west 
slope —” 

“ Whichever trail I take it’s good-by,” inter¬ 
rupted the fugitive, still addressing Alice. “If there 
was anything to live for — if you’d say the word! ” 
— she knew what he meant —“ I’d stay and take my 
schooling.” He waited a moment, and she, look¬ 
ing from his asking face to Ward’s calm brow, could 
not utter a sound. What could she promise? The 
outlaw’s tone softened to entreaty. “If you ’ll only 
say I may see you again on the other side of the range 
’twill keep my heart warm. Can’t you promised me 
that ? It’s mighty little.” 

He was going to almost certain death, and she 
could not refuse this. “You may write to me—” 
she faltered. “ You know my address —” 

He struck the little book in his pocket. “ Yes, I 
have it safe. Then I may see you again?” 

Alice, supported by Mrs. Adams, unsteadily rose. 
“Yes, yes, only go. They are coming back! I can 
hear them.” 

He took her hand. “ Good-by,” he said, chokingly. 
“ You’ve given me heart.” He bent swiftly and 
kissed her forehead. “I’ll win! You’ll hear from 
me.” 

“ Hurry! ” she wildly cried. “ I hear voices! ” 


THE OUTLAW 


207 

He caught up his hat and opened the door. As he 
faced them his lips were resolute and his eyes glowing. 
“ It’s only good night,” he said, and closed the door 
behind him. 

“Hold!” shouted Ward. “You must take some 
food.” He tore the door open. “ Wait —” 

Even as he spoke a pistol-shot resounded through 
the night. It cut through the deathly silence of the 
forest like a spiteful curse, and was answered by an¬ 
other— then, after a short pause, a swift-tearing 
volley followed. 

“ They are killing him! ” cried Alice. 

They brought him in and laid him at her feet. He 
had requested this, but when she bent to peer into 
his face he had gone beyond speech. Limp and bloody 
and motionless he lay, with eyes of unfathomable re¬ 
gret and longing, staring up at her, and as the men 
stood about with uncovered heads she stooped to him, 
forgetful of all else; knelt to lay her hand upon his 
brow. 

“ Poor boy! Poor boy! ” she said, her eyes blinded 
with tears. 

His hand stirred, seeking her own, and she took it 
and pressed it in both of hers. “ Jesus be merciful! ” 
she prayed, softly. 

He smiled faintly in acknowledgment of her pres- 


208 


THE OUTLAW 


ence and her prayer, and in this consolation died. 

Wonderingly, with imperious frown, she rose and 
confronted the sheriff. “ How is it that you are un¬ 
hurt ? Did he not fight ? ” 

" That’s what I can’t understand, miss,” he an¬ 
swered. “ He fired only once, and then into the air. 
’Pears like he wanted to die.” 

Alice understood. His thought was of her. “ You 
shall hear as little as possible,” he had said. 

“ And you killed him — as he surrendered,” she 
exclaimed, bitterly, and turned toward the dead man, 
whose face was growing very peaceful now, and with 
a blinding pain in her eyes she bent and laid a final 
caressing hand upon his brow. 

As she faced the sheriff again she said, with merci¬ 
less severity: “ I’d rather be in his place than yours.” 
Then, with a tired droop in her voice, she appealed 
to Ward: “ Take me away from here. I’m tired of 
this savage world.” 


VI 

NAZA! NAZA! NAZA! 
By Zane Grey 






VI 


NAZA! NAZA! NAZA! 

I T was a waiting day at Fort Chippewayan. The 
lonesome, far-northern Hudson's Bay Trading 
Post seldom saw such life. Tepees dotted the banks 
of the Slave River and lines of blanketed Indians 
paraded its shores. Near the boat landing a group 
of chiefs, grotesque in semi-barbaric, semi-civilized 
splendor, but black-browed, austere-eyed, stood in 
savage dignity with folded arms and high-held heads. 
Lounging on the grassy bank were white men, traders, 
trappers and officials of the post. 

All eyes were on the distant curve of the river 
where, as it lost itself in a fine-fringed bend of dark 
green, white-glinting waves danced and fluttered. A 
June sky lay blue in the majestic stream; ragged, 
spear-topped, dense green trees massed down to the 
water; beyond rose bold, bald-knobbed hills, in re¬ 
mote purple relief. 

From " The Last of the Plainsmen,” copyright, 1908, by A. C. 
McClurg & Co. By special permission from the author. 

211 


212 


NAZA! NAZA! NAZA! 


A long Indian arm stretched south. The waiting 
eyes discerned a black speck on the green, and watched 
it grow. A flatboat, with a man standing to the oars, 
bore down swiftly. 

Not a red hand, nor a white one, offered to help 
the voyager in the difficult landing. The oblong, 
clumsy, heavily laden boat surged with the current 
and passed the dock despite the boatman’s efforts. 
He swung his craft in below upon a bar and roped 
it fast to a tree. The Indians crowded above him on 
the bank. The boatman raised his powerful form 
erect, lifted a bronzed face which seemed set in craggy 
hardness, and cast from narrow eyes a keen, cool 
glance on those above. The silvery gleam in his fair 
hair told of years. 

Silence, impressive as it was ominous, broke only 
to the rattle of camping paraphernalia, which the 
voyagers threw to a level, grassy beach on the bank. 
Evidently this unwelcome visitor had journeyed from 
afar, and his boat, sunk deep into the water with its 
load of barrels, boxes and bags, indicated that the 
journey had only begun. Significant, too, were a 
couple of Winchester rifles shining on a tarpaulin. 

The cold-faced crowd stirred and parted to permit 
the passage of a tall, thin, gray personage of official 
bearing, in a faded military coat. 


NAZA! NAZA! NAZA! 


213 

“Are you the musk-ox hunter?” he asked, in 
tones that contained no welcome. 

The boatman greeted this peremptory interlocutor 
with a cool laugh — a strange laugh, in which the 
muscles of his face appeared not to play. 

“ Yes, I am the man,” he said. 

“ The chiefs of the Chippewayan and Great Slave 
tribes have been apprised of your coming. They 
have held council and are here to speak with you.” 

At a motion from the commandant, the line of 
chieftains piled down to the level beach and formed a 
half-circle before the voyager. To a man who had 
stood before grim Sitting Bull and noble Black Thun¬ 
der of the Sioux, and faced the falcon-eyed Geronimo, 
and glanced over the sights of a rifle at gorgeous-fea¬ 
thered, wild, free Comanches, this semi-circle of sav¬ 
ages — lords of the north — was a sorry comparison. 
Bedaubed and betrinketed, slouchy and slovenly, these 
low-statured chiefs belied in appearance their scorn- 
bright eyes and lofty mien. They made a sad group. 

One who spoke in unintelligible language, rolled 
out a haughty sonorous voice over the listening multi¬ 
tude. When he had finished, a half-breed interpreter, 
in the dress of a white man, spoke at a signal from 
the commandant. 

“ He says listen to the great orator of the Chippe- 


214 


NAZA! NAZA! NAZA! 


wayan. He has summoned all the chiefs of the tribes 
south of Great Slave Lake. He has held council. 
The cunning of the pale-face, who comes to take the 
musk-oxen, is well known. Let the pale-face hunter 
return to his own hunting-grounds; let him turn his 
face from the north. Never will the chiefs permit 
the white man to take musk-oxen alive from their 
country. The Ageter, the musk-ox, is their god. He 
gives them food and fur. He will never come back 
if he is taken away, and the reindeer will follow him. 
The chiefs and their people would starve. They com¬ 
mand the pale-face hunter to go back. They cry 
Naza! Naza! Naza!” 

“ Say, for a thousand miles I ’ve heard that word 
Naza!” returned the hunter, with mingled curiosity 
and disgust. “ At Edmonton Indian runners started 
ahead of me, and every village I struck the redskins 
would crowd round me and an old chief would 
harangue at me, and motion me back, and point north 
with Naza! Naza! Naza! What does it mean?” 

“No white man knows; no Indian will tell,” an¬ 
swered the interpreter. “ The traders think it means 
the Great Slave, the North Star, the North Spirit, the 
North Wind, the North Lights and Ageter, the musk¬ 
ox god.” 

“ Well, say to the chiefs to tell Ageter I have been 


NAZA! NAZA! NAZA! 


215 

four moons on the way after some of his little Ageters, 
and I’m going to keep on after them.” 

“ Hunter, you are most unwise,” broke in the com¬ 
mandant, in his officious voice. “The Indians will 
never permit you to take a musk-ox alive from the 
north. They worship him, pray to him. It is a won¬ 
der you have not been stopped.” 

“ Who ’ll stop me ? ” 

“ The Indians. They will kill you if you do not 
turn back.” 

“Faugh! to tell an American plainsman that!” 
The hunter paused a steady moment, with his eye¬ 
lids narrowing over slits of blue fire. “ There is no 
law to keep me out, nothing but Indian superstition 
and the greed of the Hudson’s Bay people. And I 
am an old fox, not to be fooled by pretty baits. For 
years the officers of this fur-trading company have 
tried to keep out explorers. Even Sir John Franklin, 
an Englishman, could not buy food of them. The 
policy of the company is to side with the Indians, to 
keep out traders and trappers. Why? So they can 
keep on cheating the poor savages out of clothing and 
food by trading a few trinkets and blankets, a little 
tobacco and rum for millions of dollars’ worth of furs. 
Have I failed to hire man after man, Indian after In¬ 
dian, not to know why I cannot get a helper? Have 


216 


NAZA! NAZA! NAZA! 


I, a plainsman, come a thousand miles alone to be 
scared by you, or a lot of craven Indians? Have I 
been dreaming of musk-oxen for forty years, to slink 
south now, when I begin to feel the north? Not I.” 

Deliberately every chief, with the sound of a hiss¬ 
ing snake, spat in the hunter’s face. He stood im¬ 
movable while they perpetrated the outrage, then 
calmly wiped his cheeks, and in his strange, cool voice 
addressed the interpreter. 

“ Tell them thus they show their true qualities, to 
insult in council. Tell them they are not chiefs, but 
dogs. Tell them they are not even squaws, only poor, 
miserable starved dogs. Tell them I turn my back on 
them. Tell them the paleface has fought real chiefs, 
fierce, bold, like eagles, and he turns his back on dogs. 
Tell them he is the one who could teach them to raise 
the musk-oxen and the reindeer, and to keep out the 
cold and the wolf. But they are blinded. Tell them 
the hunter goes north.” 

Through the council of chiefs ran a low mutter as 
of gathering thunder. 

True to his word, the hunter turned his back on 
them. As he brushed by, his eye caught a gaunt sav¬ 
age slipping from the boat. At the hunter’s stern call, 
the Indian leaped ashore, and started to run. He had 


NAZA! NAZA! NAZA! 


217 


stolen a parcel, and would have succeeded in eluding 
its owner but for an unforeseen obstacle, as striking 
as it was unexpected. 

A white man of colossal stature had stepped in the 
thief’s passage, and laid two great hands on him. In¬ 
stantly the parcel flew from the Indian, and he spun 
in the air to fall into the river with a sounding splash. 
Yells signaled the surprise and alarm caused by this 
unexpected incident. The Indian frantically swam to 
the shore. Whereupon the champion of the stranger 
in a strange land lifted a bag, which gave forth a 
musical clink of steel, and throwing it with the camp 
articles on the grassy bench, he extended a huge, 
friendly hand. 

“ My name is Rea/’ said he, in deep, cavernous 
tones. 

“ Mine is Jones,” replied the hunter, and right 
quickly did he grip the proffered hand. He saw in 
Rea a giant, of whom he was but a stunted shadow. 
Six and one-half feet Rea stood, with yard-wide 
shoulders, a hulk of bone and brawn. His ponderous, 
shaggy head rested on a bull neck. His broad face, 
with its low forehead, its close-shut mastiff under 
jaw, its big, opaque eyes, pale and cruel as those of 
a jaguar, marked him a man of terrible brute force. 


2 l8 


NAZA! NAZA! NAZA! 


“ Free-trader! ” called the commandant. “ Better 
think twice before you join fortunes with the musk¬ 
ox hunter. ,, 

“To hell with you an’ your rantin’, dog-eared red¬ 
skins ! ” cried Rea. “ I’ve run agin a man of my 
own kind, a man of my own country, an’ I’m goin’ 
with him.” With this he thrust aside some encroach¬ 
ing, gaping Indians so unconcernedly and urgently 
that they sprawled upon the grass. 

Slowly the crowd mounted and once more lined the 
bank. 

Jones realized that by some late-turning stroke of 
fortune, he had fallen in with one of the few free¬ 
traders of the province. These free-traders, from 
the very nature of their calling — which was to defy 
the fur company, and to trap and trade on their own 
account — were a hardy and intrepid class of men. 
Rea’s worth to Jones exceeded that of a dozen or¬ 
dinary men. He knew the ways of the north, the 
language of the tribes, the habits of animals, the han¬ 
dling of dogs, the uses of food and fuel. Moreover, 
it soon appeared that he was a carpenter and black¬ 
smith. 

“ There’s my kit,” he said, dumping the contents 
of his bag. It consisted of a bunch of steel traps, 
some tools, a broken ax, a box of miscellaneous things 


NAZA! NAZA! NAZA! 


219 


such as trappers used, and a few articles of flannel. 
“ Thievin’ redskins,” he added, in explanation of his 
poverty. “ Not much of an outfit. But I’m the 
man for you. Besides, I had a pal onct who knew 
you on the plains, called you ‘ Buff ’ Jones. Old Jim 
Bent he was.” 

“ I recollect Jim,” said Jones. “ He went down in 
Custer’s last charge. So you were Jim’s pal. That’d 
be a recommendation if you needed one. But the way 
you chucked the Indian overboard got me.” 

Rea soon manifested himself as a man of few words 
and much action. With the planks Jones had on 
board he heightened the stern a*nd bow of the boat to 
keep out the beating waves in the rapids; he fashioned 
a steering-gear and a less awkward set of oars, and 
shifted the cargo so as to make more room in the craft. 

“ Buff, we ’re in for a storm. Set up a tarpaulin 
an’ make a fire. We ’ll pretend to camp to-night. 
These Indians won’t dream we’d try to run the river 
after dark, and we ’ll slip by under cover.” 

The sun glazed over; clouds moved up from the 
north; a cold wind swept the tips of the spruces, and 
rain commenced to drive in gusts. By the time it was 
dark not an Indian showed himself. They were 
housed from the storm,. Lights twinkled in the tepees 
and the big log cabins of the trading company. Jones 


220 


NAZA! NAZA! NAZA! 


scouted round till pitchy black night, when a freezing, 
pouring blast sent him back to the protection of the 
tarpaulin. When he got there he found that Rea 
had taken it down and awaited him. “Off!” said 
the free-trader; and with no more noise than a drift¬ 
ing feather the boat swung into the current and glided 
down till the twinkling fires no longer accentuated 
the darkness. 

By night the river, in common with all swift rivers, 
had a sullen voice, and murmured its hurry, its re¬ 
straint, its menace, its meaning. The two boatmen, 
one at the steering gear, one at the oars, faced the 
pelting rain and watched the dim, dark line of trees. 
The craft slid noiselessly onward into the gloom. 

And into Jones' ears, above the storm, poured an¬ 
other sound, a steady, muffled rumble, like the roll of 
giant chariot wheels. It had come to be a familiar 
roar to him, and the only thing which, in his long 
life of hazzard, had ever sent the cold, prickling, tight 
shudder over his warm skin. Many times on the 
Athabasca that rumble had presaged the dangerous 
and dreaded rapids. 

“ Hell Bend Rapids! ” shouted Rea. " Bad water 
-but no rocks.” 

The rumble expanded to a roar, the roar to a boom 
that charged the air with heaviness, with a dreamy 


NAZA! NAZA! NAZA! 


221 


burr. The whole indistinct world appeared to be 
moving to the lash of wind, to the sound of rain, to 
the roar of the river. The boat shot down and sailed 
aloft, met shock on shock, breasted leaping dim white 
waves, and in a hollow, unearthly blend of watery 
sounds, rode on and on, buffeted, tossed, pitched into 
a black chaos that yet gleamed with obscure shrouds 
of light. Then the convulsive steam shrieked out a 
last defiance, changed its course abruptly to slow down 
and drown the sound of rapids in muffling distance. 
Once more the craft swept on smoothly, to the drive 
of the wind and the rush of the rain. 

By midnight the storm cleared. Murky clouds 
split to show shining, blue-white stars and a fitful 
moon, that silvered the crests of the spruces and some¬ 
times hid like a gleaming, black-threaded pearl be¬ 
hind the dark branches. 

Jones, a plainsman all his days, wonderingly watched 
the moon-blanched water. He saw it shade and 
darken under shadowy walls of granite, where it 
swelled with hollow song and gurgle. He heard again 
the far-off rumble, faint on the night wind. High 
cliff banks appeared, walled out the mellow light, and 
the river suddenly narrowed. Yawning holes, whirl¬ 
pools of a second, opened with a gurgling suck and 
raced with the boat. 


222 


NAZA! NAZA! NAZA! 


•On the craft flew. Far ahead, a long, declining 
plane of jumping frosted waves played dark and white 
with the moonbeams. The Slave plunged to his free¬ 
dom, down his riven, stone-spiked bed, knowing no 
patient eddy, and white-wreathed his dark, shiny 
rocks in spume and spray. 


VII 

A CASE OF METAPHANTASMIA 
By W. D. Howells 









VII 


A CASE OF METAPHANTASMIA 

T HE stranger was a guest of Halson’s, and Hal- 
son himself was a comparative stranger, for he 
was of recent election to our dining-club, and was 
better known to Minver than to the rest of our little 
group, though one could not be sure that he was very 
well known to Minver. The stranger had been din¬ 
ing with Halson, and we had found the two smoking 
together, with their cups of black coffee at their 
elbows, before the smoldering fire in the Turkish 
room when we came in from dinner — my friend 
Wanhope the psychologist, Rulledge the sentimental¬ 
ist, Minver the painter, and myself. It struck me for 
the first time that a fire on the hearth was out of 
keeping with a Turkish room, but I felt that the cups 
of black coffee restored the lost balance in some meas¬ 
ure. 

Before we had settled into our wonted places — in 
fact, almost as we entered — Halson looked over his 
shoulder and said: “ Mr. Wanhope, I want you to 

From “Between the Dark and the Daylight,” copyright, 1907, 
by Harper and Brothers. By special permission from the author. 
225 


226 A CASE OF METAPHANTASMIA 

hear this story of my friend’s. Go on, Newton — or, 
rather, go back and begin again — and I ’ll introduce 
you afterwards.” 

The stranger made a becoming show of depreca¬ 
tion. He said he did not think the story would bear 
immediate repetition, or was even worth telling once, 
but, if we had nothing better to do, perhaps we might 
do worse than hear it; the most he could say for it 
was that the thing really 'happened. He wore a large 
drooping, gray mustache, which, with the imperial 
below it, quite hid his mouth, and gave him, some¬ 
how, a martial effect, besides accurately dating him 
of the period between the latest sixties and earliest 
seventies, when his beard would have been black; I 
liked his mustache not being stubbed *in the modern 
manner, but allowed to fall heavily over his lips, and 
then branch away from the corners of his mouth as 
far as it would. He lighted the cigar which Halson 
gave him, and, blowing the bitten-off tip towards the 
fire, began: 

“ It was about that time when we first had a ten- 
o’clock night train from Boston to New York. Train 
used to start at nine, and lag along around by Spring- 
field, and get into the old Twenty-sixth Street Station 
here at six in the morning, where they let you sleep 
as long as you liked. They call you up now at half- 


A CASE OF METAPHANTASMIA 227 

past five, and, if you don’t turn out, they haul you 
back to Mott Haven or New Haven, I’m not sure 
which. I used to go into Boston and turn in at the 
old Worcester Depot, as we called it then, just about 
the time the train began to move, and I usually got 
a fine night’s rest in the course of the nine or ten 
hours we were on the way to New York; it didn’t 
seem quite the same after we began saying Albany 
Depot: shortened up the run, somehow. 

“ But that night I was n’t very sleepy, and the por¬ 
ter had got the place so piping hot with the big stoves, 
one at each end of the car, to keep the good, old- 
fashioned Christmas cold out, that I thought I should 
be more comfortable with a smoke before I went to 
bed; and, anyhow, I could get away from the heat 
better in the smoking-room. I hated to be leaving 
home on Christmas Eve, for I never had done that 
before, and I hated to be leaving my wife alone with 
the children and the two girls in our little house in 
Cambridge. Before I started in on the old horse-car 
for Boston, I had helped her to tuck the young ones 
in and to fill the stockings hung along the wall over 
the register — the nearest we could come to a fire¬ 
place — and I thought those stockings looked very 
weird, five of them, dangling lumpily down, and I 
kept seeing them, and her sitting up sewing in front 


228 A CASE OF METAPHANTASMIA 


of them, and afraid to go to bed on account of bur¬ 
glars. I suppose she was shyer of burglars than any 
woman ever was that had never seen a sign of them. 
She was always calling me up, to go downstairs and 
put them out, and I used to wander all over the house, 
from attic to cellar, in my nighty, with a lamp in 
one hand and a poker in the other, so that no burglar 
could have missed me if he had wanted an easy mark. 
I always kept a lamp and a poker handy.” 

The stranger heaved a sigh as of fond reminis¬ 
cence, and looked round for the sympathy which in our 
company of bachelors he failed of; even the sympa¬ 
thetic Rulledge failed of the necessary experience to 
move him in compassionate response. 

“ Well,” the stranger went on, a little damped per¬ 
haps by his failure, but supported apparently by the 
interest of the fact in hand, “ I had the smoking- 
room to myself for a while, and then a fellow put 
his head in that I thought I knew after I had thought 
I did n’t know him. It dawned on me more and 
more, and I had to acknowledge to myself, by and by, 
that it was a man named Melford, whom I used to 
room with in Holworthy at Harvard: that is, we 
had an apartment of two bedrooms and a study; and 
I suppose there were never two fellows knew less of 
each other than we did at the end of our four years 


A CASE OF METAPHANTASMIA 229 

together. I can’t say what Melford knew of me, but 
the most I knew of Melford was his particular brand 
of nightmare.” 

Wanhope gave the first sign of his interest in the 
matter. He took his cigar from his lips, and softly 
emitted an “ Ah! ” 

Rulledge went further and interrogatively repeated 
the word “ Nightmare?” 

“ Nightmare,” the stranger continued, firmly. 
“ The curious thing about it was that I never exactly 
knew the subject of his nightmare, and a more curious 
thing yet was Melford himself never knew it, when I 
woke him up. He said he couldn’t make out any¬ 
thing but a kind of scraping in a door-lock. His 
theory was that in his childhood it had been a much 
completer thing, but that the circumstances had broken 
down in a 9ort of decadence, and now there was noth¬ 
ing left of it but that scraping in the door-lock, like 
somebody trying to turn a*misfit key. I used to throw 
things at his door, and once I tried a cold-water douche 
from the pitcher, when he was very hard to waken; 
but that was rather brutal, and after a while I used 
to let him roar himself awake; he would always do it, 
if I trusted to nature; and before our junior year was 
out I got so that I could sleep through, pretty calmly; 
I would just say to myself when he fetched me to the 


230 A CASE OF METAPHANTASMIA 

surface with a yell, ‘ That’s Melford dreaming/ and 
dose off sweetly/’ 

“Jove! I don’t see how you could stand it.” 

* There’s everything in habit, Rulledge,” Minver 
put in. “ Perhaps our friend only dreamt that he 
heard a dream.” 

“ That’s quite possible,” the stranger owned, 
politely. “ But the case is superficially as I state it. 
However, it was all past, long ago, when I recognized 
Melford in the smoking-room that night; it must have 
been ten or a dozen years. I was wearing a full 
beard then, and so was he; we wore as much beard 
as we could in those days. I had been through the 
war since college, and he had been in California, most 
of the time, and, as he told me, he had been up north, 
in-Alaska, just after we bought it, and hurt his eyes — 
had snowblindness — and he wore spectacles. In 
fact, I had to do most of the recognizing, but after 
we found out who we were we were rather comfort¬ 
able ; and I liked him better than I remembered to have 
liked him in our college days. I don’t suppose there 
was ever much harm in -him; it was only my grudge 
about his nightmare. We talked along and smoked 
along for about an hour, -and I could hear the porter 
outside, making up the berths, and the train rumbled 
away towards Framingham, and then towards Wor- 


A CASE OF METAPHANTASMIA 231 

cester, and I began to be sleepy, and to think I would 
go to bed myself; and just then the door of the smok¬ 
ing-room opened, and a young girl put in her face a 
moment, and said: 4 Oh, I beg your pardon. I 

thought it was the stateroom/ and then she shut the 
door, and I realized that she looked like a girl I used 
to know.” 

The stranger stopped, and I fancied from a note 
in his voice that this girl was perhaps like an early 
love. We silently waited for him to resume how and 
when he would. He sighed, and after an appreciable 
interval he began again. “ It is curious how things 
are related to one another. My wife had never seen 
her, and yet, somehow, this girl that looked like the 
one I mean brought my mind back to my wife with a 
quick turn, after I had forgotten her in my talk with 
Melford for the time being. I thought how lonely 
she was in that little house of ours in Cambridge, on 
rather an outlying street, and I knew she was think¬ 
ing of me, and hating to have me away on Christmas 
Eve, which is n’t such a lively time after you ’re grown 
up and begin to look back on a good many other 
Christmas Eves, when you were a child yourself; in 
fact, I don’t know a dismaler night in the whole year. 
I stepped out on the platform before I began to turn 
in, for a mouthful of the night air, and I found it 


232 A CASE OF METAPHANTASMIA 

was spitting snow — a regular Christmas Eve of the 
true pattern; and I did n’t believe, from the business 
feel of those hard little pellets, that it was going to 
stop in a hurry, and I thought if we got into New 
York on time we should be lucky. The snow made 
me think of a night when my wife was sure there 
were burglars in the house; and in fact I heard their 
tramping on the stairs myself — thump, thump, 
thump, and then a stop, and then down again. Of 
course it was the slide and thud of the snow from 
the roof of the main part of the house to the roof of 
the kitchen, which was in an L, a story lower, but it 
was as good an imitation of burglars as I want to 
hear at one o’clock in the morning; and the recollec¬ 
tion of it made me more anxious about my wife, not 
because I believed she was in danger, but because I 
knew how frightened she must be. 

“ When I went into the car, that girl passed me on 
the way to her stateroom, and I concluded that she was 
the only woman on board, and her friends had taken 
the stateroom for her, so that she need n’t feel strange. 
I usually go to bed in a sleeper as I do in my own 
house, but that night I somehow could n’t. I got to 
thinking of accidents, and I thought how disagreeable 
it would be to turn out into the snow in my nighty. 
I ended by turning in with my clothes on, all except 


A CASE OF METAPHANTASMIA 233 

my coat; and, in spite of the red-hot stoves, I was n’t 
any too warm. I had a berth in the middle of the car, 
and just as I was parting my curtains to lie down, 
old Mel ford came to take the lower berth opposite. 
It made me laugh a little, and I was glad of the relief. 
‘ Why, hello, Melford,’ said I. ‘ This is like the 
old Holworthy times.’ ‘Yes, isn’t it?’ said he, and 
then I asked something that I had kept myself from 
asking all through our talk in the smoking-room, be¬ 
cause I knew he was rather sensitive about it, or used 
to be. ‘ Do you ever have that regulation night-mare 
of yours nowadays, Mel ford? ’ He gave a laugh, and 
said: ‘ I have n’t had it, I suppose, once in ten years. 

What made you think of it?’ I said: ‘Oh, I don’t 
know. It just came into my mind. Well, good-night, 
old fellow. I hope you ’ll rest well,’ and suddenly I 
began to feel light-hearted again, and I went to sleep 
as gayly as ever I did in my life. 

“. . . I did n’t go to sleep at once, though I felt so 
much at peace. In fact, Melford beat me, and I could 
hear him far in advance, steaming and whistling away, 
in a style that I recalled as characteristic, over a space 
of intervening years that I had n’t definitely summed 
up yet. It made me think of a night near Narragan- 
sett Bay, where two friends of mine and I had had a 
mighty good dinner at a sort of wild club-house, and 


234 A CASE OF METAPHANTASMIA 

had hurried into our bunks, each one so as to get the 
start of the others, for the fellows that were left 
behind knew they had no chance of sleep after the 
first began to get in his work. I laughed, and I sup¬ 
pose I must have gone to sleep almost simultaneously, 
for I don’t recollect anything afterwards till I was 
wakened by a kind of muffled bellow, that I remem¬ 
bered only too well. It was the unfailing sign of 
Mel ford’s nightmare. 

“ I was ready to swear, and I was ashamed for the 
fellow who had no more self-control than that: when 
a fellow snores, or has a nightmare, you always think 
first off that he need n’t have had it if he had tried. 
As usual, I knew Mel ford did n’t know what his night¬ 
mare was about, and that made me madder still, to 
have him bellowing into the air like that, with no 
particular aim. All at once there came a piercing 
scream from the stateroom, and then I knew that the 
girl there had heard Melford, and been scared out of 
a year’s growth.” 

The stranger made a little break, and Wanhope 
asked, “ Could you make out what she screamed, or 
was it quite inarticulate ? ” 

“ It was plain enough, and it gave me a clew, some¬ 
how, to what Mel ford’s nightmare was about. She 
was calling out. ‘ Help! help! help! Burglars! ’ till 


A CASE OF METAPHANTASMIA 235 

I thought she would raise the roof of the car.” 

“And did she wake anybody?” Rulledge in¬ 
quired. 

“ That was the strange part of it. Not a soul 
stirred, and after the first burst the girl seemed to 
quiet down again and yield the floor to Melford, who 
kept bellowing steadily away. I was so furious that 
I reached out across the aisle to shake him, but the 
attempt was too much for me. I lost my balance and 
fell out of my berth onto the floor. You may imagine 
the state of mind I was in. I gathered myself up 
and pulled Melford’s curtains open and was just going 
to fall on him tooth and nail, when I was nearly taken 
off my feet again by an apparition: well, it looked like 
an apparition, but it was a tall fellow in his nighty — 
for it was twenty years before pajamas — and he had 
a small dark lantern in his hand, such as we used to 
carry in those days so as to read in our berths when 
we could n’t sleep. He was gritting his teeth, and 
growling between them: ‘ Out o’ this! Out o’ this! 

I’m going to shoot to kill, you blasted thieves! ’ I 
could see by the strange look in his eyes that he was 
sleep-walking, and I did n’t wait to see if he had a 
pistol. I popped in behind the curtains, and found 
myself on top of another fellow, for I had popped into 
the wrong berth in my confusion. The man started 


236 A CASE OF METAPHANTASMIA 

up and yelled: 4 Oh, don’t kill me! There’s my 
watch on the stand, and all the money in the house is 
in my pantaloons pocket. The silver’s in the side¬ 
board down-stairs, and it’s plated, anyway.’ Then 
I understood what his complaint was, and I rolled onto 
the floor again. By that time every man in the car 
was out of his berth, too, except Melford, who was 
devoting himself strictly to business; and every man 
was grabbing some other, and shouting, ‘ Police ’ or 
‘Burglars!’ or ‘Help!’ or ‘Murder!’ just as the 
fancy took him.” 

“ Most extraordinary! ” Wanhope commented as the 
stranger paused for breath. 

“ . . . Yes,” the stranger owned, “ but I don’t know 
that there was n’t something more extraordinary still. 
From time to time the girl in the stateroom kept pip¬ 
ing up, with a shriek for help. She had got past the 
burglar stage, but she wanted to be saved, anyhow, 
from some danger which she didn’t specify. It went 
through me that it was very strange nobody called the 
porter, and I set up a shout of ‘ Porter! ’ on my own 
account. I decided that if there were burglars the 
porter was the man to put them out, and that if there 
were no burglars the porter could relieve our ground¬ 
less fears. Sure enough, he came rushing in, as soon 
as I called for him, from the little corner by the smok- 


A CASE OF METAPHANTASMIA S37 

ing-room where he was blacking boots between dozes. 
He was wide enough awake, if having his eyes open 
meant that, and he had a shoe on one hand and a 
shoe-brush in the other. But he merely joined in the 
general uproar and shouted for the police. 

“. . . Then I did n’t know what to do, for a min¬ 
ute. The porter was a pretty thick-headed darky, but 
he was lion-hearted; and his idea was to lay hold of a 
burglar wherever he could find him. There were 
plenty of burglars in the aisle there, or people that 
were afraid of burglars, and they seemed to think the 
porter had a good idea. They had hold of one an¬ 
other already, and now began to pull up and down the 
aisles in a way that reminded me of the old-fashioned 
mesmeric lectures, when they told their subjects that 
they were this or that, and set them to acting the part. 
I remembered how T once when the mesmerist gave out 
that they were at a horse-race, and his subjects all 
got astride of their chairs, and galloped up and down 
the hall like a lot of little boys on laths. I thought 
of that now, and although it was rather serious busi¬ 
ness, for I did n’t know what minute they would come 
to blows, I could n’t help laughing. The sight was 
weird enough. Every one looked like a somnam¬ 
bulist as he pulled and hauled. The young lady in 
the stateroom was doing her full share. She was 


238 A CASE OF METAPHANTASMIA 

screaming, ‘Won’t somebody let me out?’ and ham¬ 
mering on the door. I guess it was her screaming and 
hammering that brought the conductor at last, or 
maybe he just came round in the course of nature 
to take up the tickets. It was before the time when 
they took the tickets at the gate, and you used to stick 
them into a little slot at the side of your berth, and 
the conductor came along and took them in the night, 
somewhere between Worcester and Springfield, I 
should say.” 

“ I remember,” Rulledge assented, but very care¬ 
fully, so as not to interrupt the flow of the narra¬ 
tive. “ Used to wake up everybody in the car.” 

“ Exactly,” the stranger said. “ But this time they 
were all wide awake to receive him, or fast asleep, 
and dreaming their roles. He came along with the 
wire of his lantern over his arm, the way the old-time 
conductors did, and calling out, ‘Tickets!’ just as if 
it was broad day, and he believed every man was try¬ 
ing to beat his way to New York. The oddest thing 
about it was that the sleep-walkers all stopped their 
pulling and hauling a moment, and each man reached 
down to the little slot alongside of his berth and 
handed over his ticket. Then they took hold and be¬ 
gan pulling and hauling again. I suppose the con¬ 
ductor asked what the matter was; but I could n’t hear 


A CASE OF METAPHANTASMIA 239 

him, and I couldn’t make out exactly what he did 
say. But the passengers understood, and they all 
shouted ‘ Burglars! ’ and that girl in the stateroom 
gave a shriek that you could have heard from one end 
of the train to* the other, and hammered on the door, 
and wanted to be let out. 

" It seemed to take the conductor by surprise, and 
he faced round towards the stateroom and let the 
lantern slip off his arm, and it dropped onto the floor 
and went out; I remember thinking what a good thing 
it was it did n’t set the car on fire. But there in the 
dark — for the car lamps went out at the same time 
with the lantern — I could hear those fellows pulling 
and hauling up and down the aisle and scuffling over 
the floor, and through all Melford bellowing away, like 
an orchestral accompaniment to a combat in Wagner 
opera; but getting quieter and quieter till his bellow 
died away altogether. At the same time the row in 
the aisle of the car stopped, and there was perfect 
silence, and I could hear the snow rattling against my 
window. Then I went off into a sound sleep, and 
never woke till we got into New York.” 

The stranger seemed to have reached the end of his 
story, or at least to have exhausted the interest it had 
for him, and he smoked on, holding his knee between 
his hands and looking thoughtfully into the fire. 


240 A CASE OF METAPHANTASMIA 

He had left us rather breathless, or, better said, 
blank, and each looked at the other for some initia¬ 
tive; then we united in looking at Wanhope; that is, 
Rulledge and I did. Minver rose and stretched him¬ 
self with what I must describe as a sardonic yawn; 
Halson had stolen away, before the end, as one to 
whom the end was known. Wanhope seemed by no 
means averse to the inquiry delegated to him, but 
only to be formulating its terms. 

“ . . . I wonder ”— he turned to the stranger, who 
sat absently staring into the fire—“ if you happened 
to speak to your friend about his nightmare in the 
morning, and whether he was by any chance aware of 
the participation of the others in it? ” 

“ I certainly spoke to him pretty plain when we got 
into New York.” 

“ And what did he say ? ” 

“ He said he had never slept better in his life, and 
he could n’t remember having a trace of nightmare. 
He said he heard me groaning at one time, but I 
stopped just as he woke, and so he did n’t rouse me as 
he thought of doing. It was at Hartford, and he went 
to sleep again, and slept through without a break.” 

“ And what was your conclusion from that? ” Wan¬ 
hope asked. 


A CASE OF METAPHANTASMIA 241 

“That he was lying, I should say,” Rulledge re¬ 
plied for the stranger. 

Wanhope still waited, and the stranger said, “ I 
suppose one conclusion might be that I had dreamed 
the whole thing myself.” 

“ Then you wish me to infer,” the psychologist pur¬ 
sued, “ that the entire incident was a figment of your 
sleeping brain? That there was no sort of sleeping 
thought-transference, no metaphantasmia, no — Ex¬ 
cuse me. Do you remember verifying your impression 
of being between Worcester and Springfield when the 
affair occurred, by looking at your watch, for in¬ 
stance ? ” 

The stranger suddenly pulled out his watch at the 
word. “ Good Heavens! ” he called out. “ It’s 
twenty minutes of eleven, and I have to take the eleven- 
o'clock train to Boston. I must bid you good-evening, 
gentlemen. I ’ve just time to get it if I can catch a 
cab. Good-night. I hope if you come to Boston — 
eh — Good-night! Sometimes,” he called over his 
shoulder, “ I ’ve thought it might have been that girl 
in the stateroom that started the dreaming.” 

He had wrung our hands one after another, and 
now he ran out of the room. 



















VIII 


THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT 


By Bret Harte 




















VIII 


THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT 
S Mr. John Oakhurst, gambler, stepped into the 



1 main street of Poker Flat on the morning of 
the twenty-third of November, 1850, he was conscious 
of a change in its moral atmosphere since the pre¬ 
ceding night. Two or three men, conversing earnestly 
together, ceased as he approached, and exchanged sig¬ 
nificant glances. There was a Sabbath lull in the air, 
which, in a settlement unused to Sabbath influences, 
looked ominous. 

Mr. Oakhurst’s calm, handsome face betrayed small 
concern in these indications. Whether he was con¬ 
scious of any predisposing cause, was another ques¬ 
tion. “ I reckon they ’re after somebody,” he re¬ 
flected ; “ likely it’s me.” He returned to his pocket 
the handkerchief with which he had oeen whipping 
away the red dust of Poker Flat from his neat boots, 
and quietly discharged his mind of any further con¬ 
jecture. 

In point of fact, Poker Flat was “ after somebody.” 

From “Luck of Roaring Camp," copyright, 1915, by Houghton 
Mifflin Company. By special permission from the publishers. 


246 THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT 

It had lately suffered the loss of several thousand dol¬ 
lars, two valuable horses, and a prominent citizen. It 
was experiencing a spasm of virtuous reaction, quite 
as lawless and ungovernable as any of the acts that 
had provoked it. A secret committee had determined 
to rid the town of all improper persons. This was 
done permanently in regard of two men who were 
then hanging from the boughs of a sycamore in the 
gulch, and temporarily in the banishment of certain 
other objectionable characters. I regret to say that 
some of these were ladies. It is but due to the sex, 
however, to state that their impropriety was profes¬ 
sional, and it was only in such easily established stand¬ 
ards of evil that Poker Flat ventured to sit in judg¬ 
ment. 

Mr. Oakhurst was right in supposing that he was 
included in this category. A few of the committee 
had urged hanging him as a possible example, and a 
sure method of reimbursing themselves from his 
pockets of the sums he had won from them. “ It’s 
agin justice,' said Jim Wheeler, “ to let this yer 
young man from Roaring Camp — an entire stranger 
— carry away our money.” But a crude sentiment of 
equity residing in the breasts of those who had been 
fortunate enough to win from Mr. Oakhurst over¬ 
ruled this narrower local prejudice. 


THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT 247 

Mr. Oakhurst received his sentence with philosophic 
calmness, none the less coolly that he was aware of 
the hesitation of his judges. He was too much of a 
gambler not to accept Fate. With him life was at 
best an uncertain game, and he recognized the usual 
percentage in favor of the dealer. 

A body of armed men accompanied the deported 
wickedness of Poker Flat to the outskirts of the set¬ 
tlement. Besides Mr. Oakhurst, who was known to 
be a coolly desperate man, and for whose intimidation 
the armed escort was intended, the expatriated party 
consisted of a young woman familiarly known as “ The 
Duchess ”; another, who had won the title of “ Mother 
Shipton ”; and “ Uncle Billy/’ a suspected sluice-rob¬ 
ber and confirmed drunkard. The cavalcade provoked 
no comments from the spectators, nor was any word 
uttered by the escort. Only, when the gulch which 
marked the uttermost limit of Poker Flat was reached, 
the leader spoke briefly and to the point. The exiles 
were forbidden to return at the peril of their lives. 

As the escort disappeared, their pent-up feelings 
found vent in a few hysterical tears from the Duchess, 
some bad language from Mother Shipton, and a Par¬ 
thian volley of expletives from Uncle Billy. The phi¬ 
losophic Oakhurst alone remained silent. He listened 
calmly to Mother Shipton’s desire to cut somebody’s 


248 THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT 

heart out, to the repeated statements of the Duchess 
that she would die in the road, and to the alarming 
oaths that seemed to be bumped out of Uncle Billy 
as he rode forward. With the easy good-humor char¬ 
acteristic of his class, he insisted upon exchanging his 
own riding-horse, “ Five Spot,” for the sorry mule 
which the Duchess rode. But even this act did not 
draw the party into any closer sympathy. The young 
woman readjusted her somewhat draggled plumes with 
a feeble, faded coquetry; Mother Shipton eyed the pos¬ 
sessor of “ Five Spot ” with malevolence, and Uncle 
Billy included the whole party in one sweeping anath¬ 
ema. 

The road to Sandy Bar — a camp that, not having 
as yet experienced the regenerating influences of Poker 
Flat, consequently seemed to offer some invitation to 
the emigrants — lay over a steep mountain range. It 
was distant a day’s severe travel. In that advanced 
season, the party soon passed out of the moist, tem¬ 
perate regions of the foothills into the dry, cold, brac¬ 
ing air of the Sierras. The trail was narrow and diffi¬ 
cult. At noon the Duchess, rolling out of her saddle 
upon the ground, declared her intention of going no 
farther, and the party halted. 

The spot was singularly wild and impressive. A 
wooded amphitheater, surrounded on three sides by 


THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT 249 

precipitous cliffs of naked granite, sloped gently to¬ 
ward the crest of another precipice that overlooked the 
valley. It was, undoubtedly, the most suitable spot 
for a camp, had camping been advisable. But Mr. 
Oakhurst knew that scarcely half the journey to Sandy 
Bar was accomplished, and the party were not equipped 
or provisioned for delay. This fact he pointed out 
to his companions curtly, with a philosophic commen¬ 
tary on the folly of “throwing up their hand before 
the game was played out.” But they were furnished 
with liquor, which in this emergency stood them in 
place of food, fuel, rest, and prescience. In spite of 
his remonstrances, it was not long before they were 
more or less under its influence. Uncle Billy passed 
rapidly from a bellicose state into one of stupor, the 
Duchess became maudlin, and Mother Shipton snored. 
Mr. Oakhurst alone remained erect, leaning against a 
rock, calmly surveying them. 

Mr. Oakhurst did not drink. It interfered with a 
profession which required coolness, impassiveness, and 
presence of mind, and, in his own language, he 
“ could n’t afford it.” As he gazed at his recumbent 
fellow-exiles, the loneliness begotten of his pariah- 
trade, his habits of life, his very vices, for the first 
time seriously oppressed him. He bestirred himself 
in dusting his black clothes, washing his hands and 


250 THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT 

face, and other acts characteristic of his studiously neat 
habits, and for a moment forgot his annoyance. The 
thought of deserting his weaker and more pitiable 
companions never perhaps occurred to him. Yet he 
could not help feeling the want of that excitement 
which, singularly enough, was most conducive to that 
calm equanimity for which he was notorious. He 
looked at the gloomy walls that rose a thousand feet 
sheer above the circling pines around him; at the sky, 
ominously clouded; at the valley below, already deep¬ 
ening into shadow. And, doing so, suddenly he heard 
his own name called. 

A horseman slowly ascended the trail. In the fresh, 
open face of the new-comer Mr. Oakhurst recognized 
Tom Simson, otherwise known as “ The Innocent ” of 
Sandy Bar. He had met him some months before over 
a “ little game,” and had, with perfect equanimity, won 
the entire fortune — amounting to some forty dollars 
— of that guileless youth. After the game was fin¬ 
ished, Mr. Oakhurst drew the youthful speculator be¬ 
hind the door and thus addressed him: ‘‘Tommy, 
you ’re a good little man, but you can’t gamble worth 
a cent. Don’t try it over again.” He then handed 
him his money back, pushed him gently from the room, 
and so made a devoted slave of Tom Simson. 

There was a remembrance of this in his boyish and 


THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT 2511 

enthusiastic greeting of Mr. Oakhurst. He had 
started, he said, to go to Poker Flat to seek his for¬ 
tune. “ Alone? ” No, not exactly alone; in fact (a 
giggle), he had run away with Piney Woods. Did n’t 
Mr. Oakhurst remember Piney? She that used to 
wait on the table at the Temperance House? They 
had been engaged a long time, but old Jake Woods had 
objected, and so they had run away, and were going to 
Poker Flat to be married, and here they were. And 
they were tired out, and how lucky it was they had 
found a place to camp and company. All this the 
Innocent delivered rapidly, while Piney, a stout, 
comely damsel of fifteen, emerged from behind the 
pine tree, where she had been blushing unseen, and 
rode to the side of her lover. 

Mr. Oakhurst seldom troubled himself with senti¬ 
ment, still less with propriety; but he had a vague idea 
that the situation was not fortunate. He retained, 
however, his presence of mind sufficiently to kick Uncle 
Billy, who was about to say something, and Uncle 
Billy was sober enough to recognize in Mr. Oakhurst’s 
kick a superior power that would not bear trifling. He 
then endeavored to dissuade Tom Simson from delay¬ 
ing further, but in vain. He even pointed out the fact 
that there was no provision, nor means of making a 
camp. But, unluckily, the Innocent met this objection 


252 THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT 

by assuring the party that he was provided with an 
extra mule loaded with provisions, and by the discov¬ 
ery of a rude attempt at a loghouse near the trail. 
“ Piney can stay with Mrs. Oakhurst,” said the Inno¬ 
cent, pointing to the Duchess, “ and I can shift for 
myself.” 

Nothing but Mr. Oakhurst’s admonishing foot saved 
Uncle Billy from bursting into a roar of laughter. 
As it was, he felt compelled to retire up the canon until 
he could recover his gravity. There he confided the 
joke to the tall pine-trees, with many slaps of his 
leg, contortions of his face, and the usual profanity. 
But when he returned to the party, he found them 
seated by a fire — for the air had grown strangely 
chill and the sky overcast — in apparently amicable 
conversation. Piney was actually talking in an im¬ 
pulsive, girlish fashion to the Duchess, who was listen¬ 
ing with an interest and animation she had not shown 
for many days. The Innocent was holding forth, ap¬ 
parently with equal effect, to Mr. Oakhurst and Mother 
Shipton, who was actually relaxing into amiability. 
“ Is this yer ad — d picnic? ” said Uncle Billy, with 
inward scorn, as he surveyed the sylvan group, the 
glancing firelight, and the tethered animals in the fore¬ 
ground. Suddenly an idea mingled with the alcoholic 


THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT 253 

fumes that disturbed his brain. It was apparently 
of a jocular nature, for he felt impelled to slap his 
leg again and cram his fist into his mouth. 

As the shadows crept slowly up the mountain, a 
slight breeze rocked the tops of the pine-trees, and 
moaned through their long and gloomy aisles. The 
ruined cabin, patched and covered with pine-boughs, 
was set apart for the ladies. As the lovers parted, 
they unaffectedly exchanged a kiss, so honest and sin¬ 
cere that it might have been heard above the swaying 
pines. The frail Duchess and the malevolent Mother 
Shipton were probably too stunned to remark upon this 
last evidence of simplicity, and so turned without a 
word to the hut. The fire was replenished, the men 
lay down before the door, and in a few minutes were 
asleep. 

Mr. Oakhurst was a light sleeper. Toward morn¬ 
ing he awoke benumbed and cold. As he stirred the 
dying fire, the wind, which was now blowing strongly, 
brought to his cheek that which caused the blood to 
leave it,— snow! 

He started to his feet with the intention of awaken¬ 
ing the sleepers, for there was no time to lose. But 
turning to where Uncle Billy had been lying, he found 
him gone. A suspicion leaped to his brain and a curse 


254 THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT 

to his lips. He ran to the spot where the mules had 
been tethered; they were no longer there. The tracks 
were already rapidly disappearing in the snow. 

The momentary excitement brought Mr. Oakhurst 
back to the fire with his usual calm. He did not waken 
the sleepers. The Innocent slumbered peacefully, 
with a smile on his good-humored, freckled face; the 
virgin Piney slept beside her frailer sisters as sweetly 
as though attended by celestial guardians, and Mr. 
Oakhurst, drawing his blanket over his shoulders, 
stroked his mustache and waited for the dawn. It 
came slowly in a whirling mist of snow-flakes, that 
dazzled and confused the eye. What could be seen 
of the landscape appeared magically changed. He 
looked over the valley, and summed up the present 
and future in two words ,—“ snowed in! ” 

A careful inventory of the provisions, which, for¬ 
tunately for the party, had been stored within the hut, 
and so escaped the felonious fingers of Uncle Billy, 
disclosed the fact that with care and prudence they 
might last ten days longer. “ That is,” said Mr. Oak¬ 
hurst, sotto voce to the Innocent, “ if you ’re willing 
to board us. If you ain’t — and perhaps you’d better 
not — you can wait till Uncle Billy gets back with pro¬ 
visions.” For some occult reason, Mr. Oakhurst could 
not bring himself to disclose Uncle Billy’s rascality, 


THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT 255 

and so offered the hypothesis that he had wandered 
from the camp and had accidentally stampeded the 
animals. He dropped a warning to the Duchess and 
Mother Shipton, who of course knew the facts of their 
associate’s defection. “ They ’ll find out the truth 
about us all when they find out anything,” he added, 
significantly, “ and there’s no good frightening them 
now.” 

Tom Simson not only put all his worldly store at 
the disposal of Mr. Oakhursit, but seemed to enjoy 
the prospect of their enforced seclusion. “ We ’ll have 
a good camp for a week, and then the snow ’ll melt, 
and we ’ll all go back together.” The cheerful gayety 
of the young man, and Mr. Oakhurst’s calm infected 
the others. The Innocent with the aid of pine-boughs, 
extemporized a thatch for the roofless cabin, and the 
Duchess directed Piney in the rearrangement of the 
interior with a taste and tact that opened the blue eyes 
of that provincial maiden to their fullest extent. “ I 
reckon now you ’re used to fine things at Poker Flat,” 
said Piney. The Duchess turned away sharply to con¬ 
ceal something that reddened her cheeks- through its 
professional tint, and Mother Shipton requested Piney 
not to “ chatter.” But when Mr. Oakhurst returned 
from a weary search for the trail, he heard the sound 
of happy laughter echoed from the rocks. He stopped 


256 THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT 

in some alarm, and his thoughts first naturally reverted 
to the whiskey, which he had prudently cached. fi And 
yet it don’t somehow sound like whiskey,” said the 
gambler. It was not until he caught sight of the 
blazing fire through the still-blinding storm and the 
group around it that he settled to the conviction that 
it was “ square fun.” 

Whether Mr. Oakhurst had cached his cards with 
the whiskey as something debarred the free access of 
the community, I cannot say. It was certain that, in 
Mother Shipton’s words, he “ did n’t say cards once ” 
during that evening. Haply the time was beguiled by 
an accordion, produced somewhat ostentatiously by 
Tom Simson from his pack. Notwithstanding some 
difficulties attending the manipulation of this instru¬ 
ment, Piney Woods managed to pluck several reluc¬ 
tant melodies from its keys, to an accompaniment by 
the Innocent on a pair of bone castanets. But the 
crowning festivity of the evening was reached in a 
rude camp-meeting hymn, which the lovers, joining 
hands, sang with great earnestness and vociferation. 
I fear that a certain defiant tone and Covenanter’s 
swing to its chorus, rather than any devotional quality, 
caused it speedily to infect the others, who at last 
joined in the refrain: — 


THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT 257 

“ ‘ I’m proud to live in the service of the Lord, 

And I’m bound to die in His army.’ ” 

The pines rocked, the storm eddied and whirled 
above the miserable group, and the flames of their 
altar leaped heaven-ward, as if in token of the vow. 

At midnight the storm abated, the rolling clouds 
parted, and the stars glittered keenly above the sleep¬ 
ing camp. Mr. Oakhurst, whose professional habits 
had enabled him to live on the smallest possible amount 
of sleep, in dividing the watch with Tom Simson, 
somehow managed to take upon himself the greater 
part of that duty. He excused himself to the Inno¬ 
cent, by saying that he had “often been a week with¬ 
out sleep.” “ Doing what? ” asked Tom. “ Poker! ” 
replied Oakhurst, sententiously; “when a man gets a 
streak of luck,— nigger-luck,— he don’t get tired. 
The luck gives in first. Luck,” continued the gam¬ 
bler, reflectively, “ is a mighty queer thing. All you 
know about it for certain is that it’s bound to change. 
And it’s finding out when it’s going to change that 
makes you. We’ve had a streak of bad luck since we 
left Poker Flat,— you come along, and slap you get 
into it, too. If you can hold your cards right along 
you’re all right. For,” added the gambler, with 
cheerful irrelevance,— 


258 THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT 

“‘I’m proud to live in the service of the Lord, 

And I’m bound to die in His army.’ ” 

The third daycame, and the sun, looking through the 
white-curtained valley, saw the outcasts divide their 
slowly decreasing store of provisions for the morning 
meal. It was one of the peculiarities of that moun¬ 
tain climate that its rays diffused a kindly warmth 
over the wintry landscape, as if in regretful commisera¬ 
tion of the past. But it revealed drift on drift of 
snow piled high around the hut,— a hopeless, un¬ 
charted, trackless sea of white lying below the rocky 
shores to which the castaways still clung. Through 
the marvellously clear air the smoke of the pastoral 
village of Poker Flat rose miles away. Mother Ship- 
ton saw it, and from a remote pinnacle of her rocky 
fastness, hurled in that direction a final malediction. 
It was her last vituperative attempt, and perhaps for 
that reason was invested with a certain degree of sub¬ 
limity. It did her good, she privately informed the 
Duchess. “ Just you go *out there and cuss, and see. ,, 
She then set herself to the task of amusing “ the 
child,” as she and the Duchess were pleased to call 
Piney. Piney was no chicken, but it was a soothing 
and original theory of the pair thus to account for the 
fact that she did n’t swear and was n’t improper. 

When night crept up again through the gorges, the 


THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT 259 

reedy notes of the accordion rose and fell in fitful 
spasms and long-drawn gasps by the -flickering camp¬ 
fire. But music failed to fill entirely the aching void 
left by insufficient food, and a new diversion was pro¬ 
posed by Piney,— story-telling. Neither Mr. Oak- 
hurst nor his female companions caring to relate their 
personal experiences, this plan would have failed, too, 
but for the Innocent. Some months before he had 
chanced upon a stray copy of Mr. Pope’s ingenious 
translation of the “ Iliad.” He now proposed to nar¬ 
rate the principal incidents of that poem — having 
thoroughly mastered the argument and fairly forgot¬ 
ten the words — in the current vernacular of Sandy 
Bar. And so for the rest of that night the Homeric 
demigods again walked the earth. Trojan bully and 
wily Greek wrestled in the winds, and the great pines 
in the canon seemed to bow to the wrath of the son of 
Peleus. Mr. Oakhurst listened with quiet satisfac¬ 
tion. Most especially was he interested in the fate 
as “ Ash-heels,” as the Innocent persisted in denomina- 
ing the “ swift-footed Achilles.” 

So with small food and much of Homer and the 
accordion, a week passed over the heads of the out¬ 
casts. The sun again forsook them, and again from 
leaden skies the snow-flakes were sifted over the land. 
Day by day closer around them drew the snowy circle, 


260 THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT 


until at last they looked from their prison over drifted 
walls of dazzling white, that towered twenty feet above 
their heads. It became more and more difficult to re¬ 
plenish their fires, even from the fallen trees beside 
them, now half hidden in the drifts. And yet no one 
complained. The lovers turned from the dreary pros¬ 
pect and looked into each other’s eyes, and were happy. 
Mr. Oakhurst settled himself coolly to the losing game 
before him. The Duchess, more cheerful than she 
had been, assumed the care of Piney. Only Mother 
Shipton — once the strongest of the party — seemed 
to sicken and fade. At midnight on the tenth day 
she called Oakhurst to her side. “ I’m going,” she 
said, in a voice o*f querulous weakness, “ but don’t say 
anything about it. Don’t waken the kids. Take the 
bundle from under my head and open it.” Mr. Oak¬ 
hurst did so. It contained Mother Shipton’s rations 
for the laPst week, untouched. “ Give ’em to the 
child,” she said, pointing to the sleeping Piney. 
“ You ’ve starved yourself,” said the gambler. 
“ That’s what they call it,” said the woman, queru¬ 
lously, as she lay down again, and, turning her face 
to the wall, passed quietly away. 

The accordion and the bones were put aside that 
day, and Homer was forgotten. When the body of 


THE OUTCASTS OF. POKER FLAT 261 

Mother Shipton had -been committed to the snow, Mr. 
Oakhurst took the Innocent aside, and showed him a 
pair of snow-shoes, which he had fashioned from the 
old pack-saddle. “ There *s one chance in a hundred 
to save her yet,” he said, pointing toward Poker Flat. 
“If you can reach there in two days she’s safe.” 

“ And you ? ” asked Tom Simson. “ I ’ll stay here,” 
was the curt reply. 

The lovers parted »with a long embrace. “ You are 
not going, too ? ” said the Duchess, as she saw Mr. 
Oakhurst apparently waiting to accompany him. “ As 
far as the canon,” he replied. He turned suddenly, 
and kissed the Duchess, leaving her pallid face aflame, 
and her trembling limbs rigid with amazement. 

Night came, but not Mr. Oakhurst. It brought the 
storm again and the whirling snow. Then the 
Dbchess, feeding the fire, found that some one had 
quietly piled beside the hut enough fuel to last a few 
days longer. The tears rose to her eyes, but she hid 
them from Piney. 

The women slept but little. In the morning, look¬ 
ing into each other’s faces, they read their fate. 
Neither spoke; but Piney, accepting the position of the 
stronger, drew near and placed her arm around the 
Duchess’s waist. They kept this attitude for the rest 


262 THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT 


of the day. That night the storm reached its greatest 
fury, and, rending asunder the protecting pines, in¬ 
vaded the very hut. 

Toward morning they found themselves unable to 
feed the fire, which gradually died away. As the em¬ 
bers slowly blackened, the Duchess crept closer to 
Piney, and broke the silence of many hours: 
“ Piney, can you pray? ” “ No, dear,” said Piney, 

simply. The Duchess, without knowing exactly why, 
felt relieved, and, putting her head upon Piney’s shoul¬ 
der, spoke no more. And so reclining, the younger 
and purer pillowing the head of her soiled sister upon 
her virgin breast, they fell asleep. 

The wind lulled as if it feared to waken them. 
Feathery drifts of snow, shaken from the long pine- 
boughs, flew like white-winged birds, and settled about 
them as they slept. The moon through the rifted 
clouds looked down upon what had been the camp. 
But all human stain, all trace of earthly travail, was 
hidden beneath the spotless mantle mercifully flung 
from above. 

They slept all that day and the next, nor did they 
waken when voices and footsteps broke the silence 
of the camp. And when pitying fingers brushed the 
snow from their wan faces, you could scarcely have 
told from the equal peace that dwelt upon them, which 


THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT| 263 

was she that had sinned. Even the law of Poker 
Flat recognized this, and turned away, leaving them 
still locked in each other’s arms. 

But at the head of the gulch, on one of the largest 
pine-trees, they found the deuce of clubs pinned to 
the bark with a bowie-knife. It bore the following, 
written in pencil, in a firm hand: — 

Beneath this tree 
Lies the body 
of 

John Oakhurst, 

Who struck a streak of bad luck 
on the 23d of November, 1850, 
and 

Handed in his checks 
on the 7th December, 1850. 

And pulseless and cold, with a Derringer by his side 
and a bullet in his heart, though still calm as in life, 
beneath the snow lay he who was at once the strongest 
and yet the weakest of the outcasts of Poker Flat. 



THE HANDBOOK OF HYMEN 


By O. Henry 



















IX 


THE HANDBOOK OF HYMEN 

T IS the opinion of myself, Sanderson Pratt, who 
sets this down, that the educational system of 
the United States should be in the hands of the 
weather bureau. I can give you good reasons for it; 
and you can’t tell me why our college professors 
should n’t be transferred to the meteorological de¬ 
partment. They have been learned to read; and they 
could very easily glance at the morning papers and 
then wire in to the main office what kind of weather to 
expect. But there’s the other side of the proposition. 
I am going on to tell you how the weather furnished 
me and Idaho Green with an elegant education. 

We was up in the Bitter Root Mountains over the 
Montana line prospecting for gold. A chin-whiskered 
man in Walla-Walla, carrying a line of hope as ex¬ 
cess baggage, had grubstaked us; and there we was 
in the foothills pecking away, with enough grub on 
hand to last an army through a peace conference. 

From “The Heart of the West,” copyright, 1913, by Double¬ 
day, Page & Co. By special permission from the publishers. 

267 


268 THE HANDBOOK OF HYMEN 


Along one day conies a mail-rider over the moun¬ 
tains from Carlos, and stops to eat three cans of 
greengages, and leave us a newspaper of modern date: 
This paper prints a system of premonitions of the 
weather, and the card it dealt Bitter Root Mountains 
from the bottom of the deck was “ warmer and fair, 
with light westerly breezes.” 

That evening it began to snow, with the wind strong 
in the east. Me and Idaho moved camp into an old 
empty cabin higher up the mountain, thinking it was 
only a November flurry. But after falling three foot 
on a level it went to work in earnest; and we knew we 
was snowed in. We got in plenty of firewood before 
it got deep, and we had grub enough for two months, 
so we let the elements rage and cut up all they thought 
proper. 

If you want to instigate the art of manslaughter 
just shut two men up in a eighteen by twenty-foot 
cabin for a month. Human nature won’t stand it. 

When the first snowflakes fell me and Idaho Green 
laughed at each other’s jokes and praised the stuff we 
turned out of a skillet and called bread. At the end 
of three weeks Idaho makes this kind of a edict 
to me. Says he: 

“ I never exactly heard sour milk dropping out of 
a balloon on the bottom of a tin pan, but I have an 


THE HANDBOOK OF HYMEN 269 

idea it would be music of the spears compared to this 
attenuated stream of asphyxiated thought that ema¬ 
nates out of your organs of conversation. The kind 
of half-masticated noises that you emit every day 
puts me in mind of a cow's cud, only she ’s lady enough 
to keep hers to herself, and you ain’t." 

“ Mr. Green," says I, “ you having been a friend 
of mine once, I have some hesitations in confessing 
to you that if I had my choice for society between 
you and a common yellow, three-legged cur pup, one 
of the inmates of this here cabin would be wagging 
a tail just at present." 

This way we goes on for two or three days, and 
then we quits speaking to one another. We divides up 
the cooking implements, and Idaho cooks his grub 
on one side of the fireplace, and me on the other. 
The snow is up to the windows, and we have to keep 
a fire all day. 

You see me and Idaho never had any education be¬ 
yond reading and doing “ if John had three apples 
and James five " on a slate. We never felt any spe¬ 
cial need for a university degree, though we had ac¬ 
quired a species of intrinsic intelligence in knocking 
around the world that we could use in emergencies. 
But snowbound in that cabin in the Bitter Roots, we 
felt for the first time that if w’e had studied Homer 


270 THE HANDBOOK OF HYMEN 

or Greek and fractions and the higher branches of 
information, we’d have had some resources in the 
line of meditation and private thought. I’ve seen 
them Eastern college fellows working in camps all 
through the West, and I never noticed but what ed¬ 
ucation was less of a drawback to ’em than you would 
think. Why once over on Snake River, when An¬ 
drew McWilliams’ saddle horse got the botts, he sent 
a buckboard ten miles for one of these strangers that 
claimed to be a botanist. But that horse died. 

One morning Idaho was poking around with a stick 
on top of a little shelf that was too high to reach. 
Two books fell down to the floor. I started toward 
’em, but caught Idaho’s eye. He speaks for the first 
time in a week. 

“ Don’t burn your fingers,” says he. “ In spite 
of the fact that you ’re only fit to be the companion 
of a sleeping mud-turtle, I ’ll give you a square deal. 
And that’s more than your parents did when they 
turned you loose in the world with the sociability of 
a rattlesnake and the bedside manner of a frozen tur¬ 
nip. I ’ll play you a game of seven-up, the winner 
to pick up his choice of the book, the loser to take the 
other.” 

We played; and Idraho won. He picked up his 


THE HANDBOOK OF HYMEN 


271 


book; and I took mine. Then each of us got on his 
side of the house and went to reading. 

I never was as glad to see a ten-ounce nugget as 
I was that book. And Idaho looked at his like a kid 
looks at a stick of candy. 

Mine was a little book about five by six inches 
called “ Herkimer’s Handbook of Indispensable In¬ 
formation.” I may be wrong, but I think that was 
the greatest book that ever was written. I’ve got 
it to-day; and I can stump you or any man fifty times 
in five minutes with the information in it. Talk about 
Solomon or the “New York Tribune”! Herkimer 
had cases on both of ’em. That man must have put 
in fifty years and travelled a million miles to find out 
all that stuff. There was the population of all cities 
in it, and the way to tell a girl’s age, and the number 
of teeth a camel has. It told you the longest tunnel 
in the world, the number of the stars, how long it 
takes for chicken pox to break out, what a lady’s 
neck ought to measure, the veto powers of Governors, 
the dates of the Roman aqueducts, how many pounds 
of rice going without three beers a day would buy, 
the average annual temperature of Augusta, Maine, 
the quantity of seed required to plant an acre of car¬ 
rots in drills, antidotes for poisons, the number of 


272 THE HANDBOOK OF HYMEN 

hairs on a blond lady’s head, how to preserve eggs, 
the height of all the mountains in the world, and the 
dates of all wars and battles and how to restore 
drowned persons, and sunstroke, and the number of 
tacks in a pound, and how to make dynamite and 
flowers and beds, and what to do before the doc¬ 
tor comes — and a hundred times as many things be¬ 
sides. If there was anything Herkimer did n’t know 
I did n’t miss it out of the book. 

I sat and read that book for four hours. All the 
wonders of education was compressed in it. I for¬ 
got the snow, and I forgot that me and old Idaho was 
on the outs. He was sitting still on a stool reading 
away with a kind of partly soft and partly mysteri¬ 
ous look shining through his tan-bark whiskers. 

“ Idaho,” says I, “ what kind of a book is yours? ” 

Idaho must have forgot, too, for he answered mod¬ 
erate, without any slander or malignity. 

“ Why,” says he, “ this here seems to be a volume 
by Homer K. M.” 

“ Homer K. M. what ? ” I asks. 

“ Why, just Homer K. M.,” says he. 

“ You ’re a liar,” says I, a little riled that Idaho 
should try to put me up a tree. “ No man is going 
’round signing books with his initials. If it’s Homer 
K. M. Spoopendyke, or Homer K. M. McSweeney, 


THE HANDBOOK OF HYMEN 273 

or Homer K. M. Jones, why don’t you say so like a 
man instead of bitting off the end of it like a calf 
chewing off the tail of a shirt on a clothes-line? ” 

“ I put it to you straight, Sandy,” says Idaho, quiet. 
“ It’s a poem book,” says he, “ by Homer K. M. I 
could n’t get color out of it at first, but there’s a 
vein if you follow it up. I would n’t have missed 
this book for a pair of red blankets.” 

“ You ’re welcome to it,” says I. “ What I want 
is a disinterested statement of facts for the mind to 
work on, and that’s what I seem to find in the book 
I’ve drawn.” 

“ What you’ve got,” says Idaho, “ is statistics, the 
lowest grade of information that exists. They ’ll 
poison your mind. Give me old K. M.’s system of 
surmises. He seems to be a kind of a wine agent. 
His regular toast is 4 nothing doing,’ and he seems 
to have a grouch, but he keeps it so well lubricated 
with booze that his worst kicks sound like an invita¬ 
tion to split a quart. But it’s poetry,” says Idaho, 
“ and I have sensations of scorn for that truck of 
yours that tries to convey sense in feet and inches. 
When it comes to explaining the instinct of philosophy 
through the art of nature, old K. M. has got your 
man beat by drills, rows, paragraphs, chest measure¬ 
ment, and average annual rainfall.” 


274 THE HANDBOOK OF HYMEN 

So that ’s the way me and Idaho had it. Day and 
night all the excitement we got was studying our 
books. That snowstorm sure fixed us with a fine lot 
of attainments apiece. By the time the snow melted, 
if you had stepped up to me suddenly and said: “ San¬ 
derson Pratt, what would it cost per square foot to 
lay a roof with twenty-eight tin at nine dollars and 
fifty cents per box?” I’d have told you as quick as 
light could travel the length of a spade handle at the 
rate of one hundred and ninety-two thousand miles 
per second. How many can do it? You wake up 
’most any man you know in the middle of the night 
and ask him quick to tell you the number of bones in 
the human skeleton exclusive of the teeth, or what per¬ 
centage of the vote of the Nebraska Legislature over¬ 
rules a veto. Will he tell you? Try him and see. 

About what benefit Idaho got out of his poetry 
book I did n’t exactly know. Idaho boosted the wine- 
agent every time he opened his mouth; but I was n’t 
so sure. 

This Homer K. M., from what leaked out of his 
libretto through Idaho, seemed to me to be a kind of 
a dog who looked at life like it was a tin can tied to 
his tail. After running himself half to death, he sits 
down, hangs his tongue out, and looks at the can and 
says: 


THE HANDBOOK OF HYMEN 


275 

“ Oh, well, since we can’t shake the growler, let’s 
get it filled at the corner, and all have a drink on me.” 

Besides that, it seems he was a Persian; and I 
never hear of Persia producing anything worth men¬ 
tioning unless it was Turkish rugs and Maltese cats. 

That spring me and Idaho struck pay ore. It was 
a habit of ours to sell out quick and keep moving. We 
unloaded on our grubstaker for eight thousand dol¬ 
lars apiece; and then we drifted down to this little 
town of Rosa, on the Salmon River, to rest up, and 
get some human grub, and have our whiskers har¬ 
vested. 

Rosa was no mining-camp. It laid in the valley, 
and was as free of uproar and pestilence as one of 
them rural towns in the country. There was a three- 
mile trolley line champing its bit in the environs; and 
me and Idaho spent a week riding on one of the cars, 
dropping off of nights at the Sunset View Hotel. 
Being now well read as well as travelled, we was soon 
pro re nata, with the best society in Rosa, and was 
invited out to the most dressed-up and high-toned en¬ 
tertainments. It was at a piano recital and quail-eat¬ 
ing contest in the city hall, for the benefit of the fire 
company, that me and Idaho first met Mrs. De Or¬ 
mond Sampson, the queen of Rosa society. 

Mrs. Sampson was a widow, and owned the only 


276 THE HANDBOOK OF HYMEN 

two-story house in town. It was painted yellow, and 
whichever way you looked from you could see it as 
plain as egg on the chin of an O’Grady on a Friday. 
Twenty-two men in Rosa besides me and Idaho was 
trying to stake a claim on that yellow house. 

There was a dance after the song books and quail 
bones had been raked out of the Hall. Twenty-three 
of the bunch galloped over to Mrs. Sampson and 
asked for a dance. I side-stepped the two-step, and 
asked permission to escort her home. That’s where 
I made a hit. 

On the way home says she: 

“ Ain’t the stars lovely and bright to-night, Mr. 
Pratt?” 

“ For the chance they’ve got,” says I, “ they ’re 
humping themselves in a mighty creditable way. That 
big one you see is sixty-six billions of miles distant. 
It took thirty-six years for its light to reach us. With 
an eighteen-foot telescope you can see forty-three 
millions of ’em, including them of the thirteenth mag¬ 
nitude, which, if one was to go out now, you would 
keep on seeing it for twenty-seven hundred years.” 

“ My! ” says Mrs. Sampson. “ I never knew that 
before. How warm it is! I’m as damp as I can 
be from dancing so much.” 

“ That’s easy to account for,” says I, “ when you 


THE HANDBOOK OF HYMEN 277 

happen to know that you’ve got two million sweat- 
glands working all at once. If every one of your 
perspiratory ducts, which are a quarter of an inch 
long, was placed end to end, they would reach a dis¬ 
tance of seven miles.” 

“ Lawsy! ” says Mrs. Sampson. “ It sounds like 
an irrigation ditch you was describing, Mr. Pratt. 
'How do you get all this knowledge of information? ” 

“ From observation, Mrs. Sampson,” I tells her. 
“ I keep my eyes open when I go about the world.” 

“ Mr. Pratt,” says she, “ I always did admire a 
man of education. There are so few scholars among 
the sap-headed plug-uglies of this town that it is a 
real pleasure to converse with a gentleman of culture. 
I ’d be gratified to have you call at my house when¬ 
ever you feel so inclined.” 

And that was the way I got the goodwill of the 
lady in the yellow house. Every Tuesday and Fri¬ 
day evenings I used to go there and tell her about 
the wonders of the universe as discovered, tabulated, 
and compiled from nature by Herkimer. Idaho and 
the other gay Lutherans of the town got every minute 
of the rest of the week that they could. 

I never imagined that Idaho was trying to work on 
Mrs. Sampson with old K. M.’s rules of courtship 
till one afternoon when I was on my way over to 


278 THE HANDBOOK OF HYMEN 

take her a basket of wild hog-plums. I met the lady 
coming down the lane that led to her house. Her 
eyes was snapping, and her hat made a dangerous dip 
over one eye. 

“ Mr. Pratt,” she opens up, “ this Mr. Green is a 
friend of yours, I believe.” 

“ For nine years,” says I. 

“ Cut him out,” says she. “ He’s no gentleman! ” 

“ Why, ma’am,” says I, “ he’s a plain incumbent 
of the mountains, with asperities and the usual fail¬ 
ings of a spendthrift and a liar, but I never on the 
most momentous occasion had the heart to deny that 
he was a gentleman. It may be that in haberdashery 
and the sense of arrogance and display Idaho offends 
the eye, but inside, ma’am, I’ve found him impervious 
to the lower grades of crime and obesity. After nine 
years of Idaho’s society, Mrs. Sampson,” I winds up, 
“ I should hate to impute him, and I should hate to 
see him imputed.” 

“ It’s right plausible of you, Mr. Pratt,” says Mrs. 
Sampson, “ to take up the curmudgeons in your 
friend’s behalf; but it don’t alter the fact that he has 
made proposals to me sufficiently obnoxious to ruffle 
the ignominy of any lady.” 

“ Why, now, now, now! ” says I. “ Old Idaho do 
that! I could believe it of myself sooner. I never 


THE HANDBOOK OF HYMEN 


279 

knew but one thing to deride in him; and a blizzard 
was responsible for that. Once while we was snow¬ 
bound in the mountains he became a prey to a kind 
of spurious and uneven poetry, which may have cor¬ 
rupted his demeanor. ,, 

“ It has,” says Mrs. Sampson. “ Ever since I 
knew him he has been reciting to me a lot of irrelig¬ 
ious rhymes by some person he calls Ruby Ott, and 
who is no better than she should be, if you judge by 
her poetry.” 

“ Then Idaho has struck a new book,” says I, “ for 
the one he had was by a man who writes under the 
nom de plume of K. M.” 

“ He’d better have stuck to it,” says Mrs. Samp¬ 
son, “ whatever it was. And to-day he caps the 
vortex. I get a bunch of flowers from him, and on 
’em is pinned a note. Now, Mr. Pratt, you know a 
lady when you see her; and you know how I stand 
in Rosa society. Do you think for a moment that 
I’d skip out to the woods with a man along with a 
jug of wine and a loaf of bread, and go singing and 
cavorting up and down under the trees with him? I 
take a little claret with my meals, but I’m not in the 
habit of packing a jug of it into the brush and raising 
Cain in any such style as that. And of course he’d 
bring his book of verses along, too. He said so. Let 


280 THE HANDBOOK OF HYMEN 


him go on his scandalous picnics alone! Or let him 
take his Ruby Ott with him. I reckon she would n’t 
kick unless it was on account of there being too much 
bread along. And what do you think of your gen¬ 
tleman friend now, Mr. Pratt?” 

“ Well, ’m,” says I, “ it may be that Idaho’s in¬ 
vitation was a kind of poetry, and meant no harm. 
May be it belonged to the class of rhymes they call 
figurative. They offend law and order, but they get 
sent through the mails on the grounds that they mean 
something that they don’t say. I’d be glad on Idaho’s 
account if you’d overlook it,” says I, “ and let us. 
extricate our minds from the low regions of poetry to 
the higher planes of fact and fancy. On a beautiful 
afternoon like this, Mrs. Sampson,” I goes on, “ we 
should let our thoughts dwell accordingly. Though 
it is warm here, we should remember that at the equa¬ 
tor the line of perpetual frost is at an altitude of fif¬ 
teen thousand feet. Between the latitudes of forty 
degrees and forty-nine degrees it is from four thou¬ 
sand to nine thousand feet.” 

“ Oh, Mr. Pratt,” says Mrs. Sampson, “ it’s such 
a comfort to hear you say them beautiful facts after 
getting such a jar from that minx of a Ruby’s 
poetry! ” 

“ Let us sit on this log at the roadside,” says I, 


THE HANDBOOK OF HYMEN 281 


“ and forget the inhumanity and ribaldry of the poets. 
It is in the glorious columns of ascertained facts and 
legalized measures that beauty is to be found. In 
this very log we sit upon, Mrs. Sampson/* says I, “ is 
statistics more wonderful than any poem. The rings 
show it was sixty years old. At the depth of two 
thousand feet it would become coal in three thousand 
years. The deepest coal mine in the world is at 
Killingworth, near Newcastle. A box four feet long, 
three feet wide, and two feet eight inches deep will 
hold one ton of coal. If an artery is cut, compress 
it above the wound. A man’s leg contains thirty 
bones. The Tower of London was burned in 1841.” 

“ Go on, Mr. Pratt,” says Mrs. Sampson. “ Them 
ideas is so original and soothing. I think statistics are 
just as lovely as they can be.” 

But it was n’t till two weeks later that I got all that 
was coming to me out of Herkimer. 

One night I was waked up by folks hollering 
“Fire!” all around. I jumped up and dressed and 
went out of the hotel to enjoy the scene. When I 
seen it was Mrs. Sampson’s house, I gave forth a kind 
of yell, and I was there in two minutes. 

The whole lower story of the yellow house was in 
flames, and every masculine, feminine, and canine in 
Rosa was there, screeching and barking and getting 


282 THE HANDBOOK OF HYMEN 


in the way of the firemen. I saw Idaho trying to 
get away from six firemen who were holding him. 
They was telling him the whole place was on fire down¬ 
stairs, and no man could go in it and come out alive. 

“ Where’s Mrs. Sampson?’’ I asks. 

“ She has n’t been seen,” says one of the firemen. 
“ She sleeps up-stairs. We’ve tried to get in, but 
we can’t, and our company has n’t any ladders yet.” 

I runs around to the light of the big blaze, and pulls 
the Handbook out of my inside pocket. I kind of 
laughed when I felt it in my hands — I reckon I was 
some daffy with the sensation of excitement. 

“ Herky, old boy,” I says to it, as I flipped over 
the pages, “ you ain’t ever lied to me yet, and you 
ain’t ever throwed me down at a scratch yet. Tell 
me what, old boy, tell me what! ” says I. 

I turned to “ What to do in Case of Accidents,” 
on page 117. I run my finger down the page, and 
struck it. Good old Herkimer, he never overlooked 
anything! It said: 

Suffocation from Inhaling Smoke or Gas.— There is noth¬ 
ing better than flaxseed. Place a few seed in the outer 
corner of the eye. 

I shoved the Handbook back in my pocket, and 
grabbed a boy that was running by. 

“ Here,” says I, giving him some money, “ run to 


THE HANDBOOK OF HYMEN 283 

the drug store and bring a dollar’s worth of flaxseed. 
Hurry, and you ’ll get another one for yourself. 
Now,” I sings out to the crowd, “ we ’ll have Mrs. 
Sampson! ” And I throws away my coat and hat. 

Four of the firemen and citizens grabs hold of me. 
It’s sure death, they say, to go in the house, for the 
floors was beginning to fall through. 

“ How in blazes,” I sings out, kind of laughing yet, 
but not feeling like it, “ do you expect me to put flax¬ 
seed in a eye without the eye ? ” 

I jabbed each elbow in a fireman’s face, kicked the 
bark off of one citizen’s shin, and tripped the other 
one with a side hold. And then I busted into the 
house. If I die first I ’ll write you a letter and tell 
you if it’s any worse down there than the inside of 
that yellow house was; but don’t believe it yet. I 
was a heap more cooked than the hurry-up orders of 
broiled chicken that you get in restaurants. The fire 
and smoke had me down on the floor twice, and was 
about to shame Herkimer, but the firemen helped me 
with their little stream of water, and I got to Mrs. 
Sampson’s room. She’d lost consciousness from 
the smoke, so I wrapped her in the bed clothes and got 
her on my shoulder. Well, the floors was n’t as bad 
as they said, or I never could have done it — not by 


no means. 


284 THE HANDBOOK OF HYMEN 

I carried her out fifty yards from the house and 
laid her on the grass. Then, of course, every one of 
them other twenty-two plaintiffs to the lady’s hand 
crowded around with tin dippers of water ready to 
save her. And up runs the boy with the flaxseed. 

I unwrapped the covers from Mrs. Sampson’s head. 
She opened her eyes and says: 

“ Is that you, Mr. Pratt ? ” 

“ S-s-sh,” says I. “ Don’t talk till you’ve had 
the remedy.” 

I runs my arm around her neck and raises her head, 
gentle, and breaks the bag of flaxseed with the other 
hand; and as easy as I could I bends over and slips 
three or four of the seeds in the outer corner of her 
eye. 

Up gallops the village doc by this time, and snorts 
around, and grabs at Mrs. Sampson’s pulse, and wants 
to know what I mean by any such sandblasted non¬ 
sense. 

“ Well, old Jalap and Jerusalem oakseed,” says I, 
“ I’m no regular practitioner, but I ’ll show you my 
authority, anyway.” 

They fetched my coat, and I gets out the Hand¬ 
book. 

“ Look on page 117,” says I, “ at the remedy for 


THE HANDBOOK OF HYMEN 285 

suffocation by smoke or gas. Flaxseed in the outer 
corner of the eye, it says. I don’t know whether it 
works as a smoke consumer or whether it hikes the 
compound gastro-hoppopotamus nerve into action, but 
Herkimer says it, and he was called to the case first. 
If you want to make it a consultation, there ’s no ob¬ 
jection.” 

Old doc takes the book and looks at it by means 
of his specs and a fireman’s lantern. 

“ Well, Mr. Pratt,” says he, “ you evidently got on 
the wrong line in reading your diagnosis. The recipe 
for suffocation says: ‘Get the patient into fresh air 
as quickly as possible, and place in a reclining position.’ 
The flaxseed remedy is for ‘ Dust and Cinders in the 
Eye,’ on the line above. But after all—” 

“ See here,” interrupts Mrs. Sampson, “ I reckon 
I’ve got something to say in this consultation. That 
flaxseed done me more good than anything I ever 
tried.” And then she raises up her head and lays it 
back on my arm again, and says: “ Put some in the 

other eye, Sandy dear.” 

And so if you was to stop off at Rosa to-morrow, 
or any other day, you’d see a fine new yellow house 
with Mrs. Pratt, that was Mrs. Sampson, embellish¬ 
ing and adorning it. And if you was to step inside 


286 THE HANDBOOK OF HYMEN 


you’d see on the marble-top center table in the parlor 
" Herkimer’s Handbook of Indispensable Informa¬ 
tion,” all rebound in red morocco, and ready to be 
consulted on any subject pertaining to human hap¬ 
piness and wisdom. 


JACK AND THE KING 


By Seumas MacManus 


X 


JACK AND THE KING 
ANST upon a time, when pigs was swine, 



V \ there was a poor widdy woman lived all alone 
with her wan son Jack in a wee hut of a house, that on 
a dark night ye might aisily walk over it by mistake, 
not knowin’ at all, at all, it was there, barrin’ ye’d hap¬ 
pen to strike yer toe again’ it. An’ Jack an’ his mother 
lived for lee an’ long, as happy as hard times would 
allow them, in this wee hut of a house, Jack sthrivin’ 
to ’arn a little support for them both by workin’ out, 
an’ doin’ wee turns back an’ forrid to the neighbors. 
But there was one winter, an’ times come to look black 
enough for them — nothin’ to do, an’ less to ate, an’ 
clothe themselves as best they might; an’ the winther 
wore on, gettin’ harder an’ harder, till at length when 
Jack got up out of his bed on a mornin’, an’ axed his 
mother to make ready the drop of stirabout for their 
little brakwus as usual, “ Musha, Jack,” says his 
mother, says she, “ the male-chist — thanks be to the 
Lord! — is as empty as Paddy Ruadh’s donkey that 

From “ In Chimney Corners,” copyright, 1899, by Doubleday, 
Page & Company. By special permission from the author. 


2 9 o JACK AND THE KING 

used to ate his brakwus at supper-time. It stood out 
long an’ well, but it’s empty at last, Jack, an’ no sign 
of how we ’re goin’ to get it filled again — only we 
trust in the good Lord that niver yet disarted the 
widow and the orphan — He ’ll not see us wantin’, 
Jack.” 

“ The Lord helps them that help themselves, 
Mother,” says Jack back again to her. 

“ Thrue for ye, Jack,” says she, “ but I don’t see 
how we ’re goin’ to help ourselves.” 

“ He’s a mortial dead mule out an’ out that has n’t 
a kick in him,” says Jack. “ An’, Mother, with the 
help of Providence — not comparin’ the Christian to 
the brute baste — I have a kick in me yet; if you 
thought ye could only manage t*o sthrive along the best 
way you could for a week, or maybe two weeks, till I 
get back again off a little journey I’d like to undher- 
take.” 

“ An’ may I make bould to ax, Jack,” says his 
mother to him, “ where would ye be afther makin’ the 
little journey to? ” 

“ You may that, then, Mother,” says Jack. “ It’s 
this: You know the King of Munsther is a great jin- 
tleman entirely. It’s put on him, he’s so jintlemanly, 
that he was niver yet known to make use of a wrong 
or disrespectable word. An’ he prides himself on it 


JACK AND THE KING 291 

so much that he has sent word over all the known airth 
that he’ll give his beautiful daughter — the loveliest 
picthur in all Munsther, an’ maybe in all Irelan’, if 
we’d say it — an’ her weight in goold, to any man 
that in three trials will make him use the unrespectful 
word, an’ say, ‘Ye’re a liar!’ But every man that 
tries him, an’ fails, loses his head. All sorts and de¬ 
scriptions of people, from prences an’ peers down to 
bagmen an’ beggars, have come from all parts of the 
known world to thry for the great prize, an’ all of 
them up to this has failed, an’ by consequence lost 
their heads. But, Mother dear,” says Jack, “ where’s 
the use in a head to a man if he can’t get mail for it 
to ate? So I’m goin’ to thry me fortune, only axin’ 
your blissin’ an’ God’s blissin’ to help me on the way.” 

“ Why, Jack,” says his mother, “ it’s a dangersome 
task; but as you remark, where’s the good of the 
head to ye when ye can’t get mail to put in it? So, 
I give ye my blissin’, an’ night, noon, an’ mornin’ 
I ’ll be prayin’ for ye to prosper.” 

An’ Jack set out, with his heart as light as his 
stomach, an’ his pocket as light as them both together; 
but a man ’ill not travel far in ould Irelan’ (thanks 
be to God!) on the bare-footed stomach — as we’ll 
call it — or it ’ll be his own fault if he does; an’ Jack 
did n’t want for plenty of first-class aitin’ an’ dhrinkin’ 


292 


JACK AND THE KING 

lashin’s an’ lavin’s and pressin’ him to more. An’ in 
this way he thravelled away before him for five long 
days till he come to the King of Munsther’s castle. 
And when he was corned there he rattled on the gate, 
an’ out come the King. 

“ Well, me man,” says the King, “ what might be 
your business here ? ” 

“ I ’m come here, your Kingship,” says Jack, 
mighty polite, an’ pullin’ his forelock, be raison his 
poor ould mother had always insthructed him in the 
heighth of good breedin’—“ I’m come here, your 
R’yal Highness,” says Jack, “ to thry for yer daugh¬ 
ter.” 

“ Hum! ” says the King. “ Me good young man,” 
says he, “ don’t ye think it a poor thing to lose yer 
head?” 

“ If I lose it,” says Jack, “ sure one consolation ’ll 
be that I ’ll lose it in a glorious cause.” 

An’ who do ye think would be listenin’ to thi's 
same deludherin’ speech of Jack’s, from over the wall, 
but the King’s beautiful daughter herself. She took 
an eyeful out of Jack, an’ right well plaised she was 
with his appearance, for,— 

“ Father,” says she at once, “ has n’t the boy as 
good a right to get a chance as another ? What’s 
his head to you? Let the boy in,” says she. 


293 


JACK AND THE KING 

An’ sure enough, without another word, the King 
took Jack within the gates, an’ handin’ him over to 
the sarvints, tould him to be well looked afther an’ 
cared for till mornin’. 

Next mornin’ the King took Jack with him an’ 
fetched him out into the yard. “ Now then, Jack,” 
says he, “ we ’re goin’ to begin. We ’ll drop into the 
stables here, an’ I ’ll give you your first chance.” 

So he took Jack into the stables an’ showed him 
some wondherful big horses, the likes of which poor 
Jack never saw afore, an’ everyone of which was the 
heighth of the side wall of the castle an’ could step 
over the castle walls, which were twenty-five feet 
high, without strainin’ themselves. 

“ Them’s purty big horses, Jack,” says the King. 
“ I don’t suppose ever ye saw as big or as wondher¬ 
ful as them in yer life.” 

“ Oh, they ’re purty big indeed,” says Jack, takin’ 
it as cool as if there was nothin’ whatsomever aston- 
ishin’ to him about them. “ They ’re purty big in¬ 
deed,” says Jack, “ for this counthry. But at home 
with us in Donegal we’d only count them little nags, 
shootable for the young ladies to dhrive in pony-car¬ 
riages.” 

“ What! ” says the King, “ do ye mane to tell me 
ye have seen bigger in Donegal? ” 


294 


JACK AND THE KING 

“ Bigger!” says Jack. “Phew! Blood alive, yer 
Kingship, I seen horses in my father’s stable that 
could step over your horses without thrippin’. My 
father owned one big horse — the greatest, I believe, 
in the world again.” 

“ What was he like ? ” says the King. 

“ Well, yer Highness,” says Jack, “ it’s quite be¬ 
yond me to tell ye what he was like. But I know 
when we wanted to mount it could only be done by 
means of a step-laddher, with nine hundred and ninety 
steps to it, every step a mile high, an’ you had to jump 
seven mile off the topmost step to get on his back. He 
ate nine ton of turnips, nine ton of oats, an’ nine ton of 
hay in the day, an’ it took ninety-nine men in the day¬ 
time, an’ ninety-nine more in the night-time, carry¬ 
ing his feeds to him; an’ when he wanted a drink, 
the ninety-nine men had to lead him to a lough that 
was nine mile long, nine mile broad, an’ nine mile deep, 
an’ he used to drink it dry every time,” says Jack, 
an’ then he looked at the King, expectin’ he’d surely 
have to make a liar of him for that. 

But the King only smiled at Jack, an’ says he, 
“ Jack, that was a wonderful horse entirely, an’ no 
mistake.” 

Then he took Jack with him out into the garden 
for his second trial, an’ showed him a beeskep, the 


JACK AND THE KING 295 

size of the biggest rick of hay ever Jack had seen; 
an’ every bee in the skep was the size of a thrush an’ 
queeny bee as big as a jackdaw. 

“ Jack,” says the King, says he, “ is n’t them won- 
dherful bees? I’ll warrant ye, ye never saw any¬ 
thing like them ? ” 

“ Oh, they ’re middlin’— middlin’ fairish,” says 
Jack—“for this counthry. But they’re nothin’ at 
all to the bees we have in Donegal. If one of our bees 
was flying across the fields,” says Jack, “ and one of 
your bees happened to come in its way, an’ fall into 
our bee’s eye our bee would fly to the skep, an’ ax 
another bee to take the mote out of his eye.” 

“ Do you tell me so, Jack? ” says the King. “ You 
must have great monsthers of bees.” 

“ Monsthers,” says Jack. “ Ah, yer Highness, 
monsthers is no name for some of them. I remim- 
ber,” says he, “ a mighty great breed of bees me 
father owned. They were that big that when my 
father’s new castle was a-buildin’ (in the steddin’ of 
the old one which he consaived to be too small for a 
man of his mains), and when the workmen closed in 
the roof, it was found there was a bee inside, an’ the 
hall door not bein’ wide enough, they had to toss the 
side wall to let it out. Then the queeny bee — ah! 
she was a wonderful baste entirely!” says Jack. 


296 JACK AND THE KING 

“ Whenever she went out to take the air she used to 
overturn all the ditches and hedges in the country; 
the wind of her wings tossed houses and castles; she 
used to swallow whole flower gardens; an’ one day she 
flew against a ridge of mountains nineteen thousand 
feet high and knocked a piece out from top to bottom, 
an’ it’s called Bamesmore Gap to this day. This 
queeny bee was a great trouble an’ annoyance to my 
father, seem’ all the harm she done the naybours 
round about; and once she took it in her head to fly 
over to England, an’ she created such mischief an’ 
disolation there that the King of Englan’ wrote over 
to my father if he did n’t come immediately an’ take 
home his queeny bee that was wrackin’ an’ ruinin’ 
all afore her he’d come over himself at the head of 
all his army, and wipe my father off the face of the 
airth. So my father ordhered me to mount our won- 
dherful big horse that I tould ye about, an’ that could 
go nineteen mile at every step, an’ go over to Englan’ 
an’ bring home our queeny bee. An’ I mounted the 
horse an’ started, an’ when I come as far as the sea 
I had to cross to get over to Englan’, I put the horse’s 
two fore feet into my hat, an’ in that way he thrashed 
the sea dry all the way across an’ landed me safely. 
When I come to the King of Englan’ he had to supply 
me with nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand men 


JACK AND THE KING 297 

an’ ninety-nine thousand mile of chains an* ropes to 
catch the queeny bee an’ bind her. It took us nine 
years to catch her, nine more to tie her, an’ nine years 
and nine millions of men to drag her home, an’ the 
King of Englan’ was a beggar afther from that day 
till the day of his death. Now what do ye think of 
that bee?” says Jack, thinkin’ he had the King this 
time sure enough. 

But the King was a cuter one than Jack took him 
for, an’ he only smiled again, an’ says he,— 

“ Well, Jack, that was a wondherful great queeny 
bee entirely.” 

Next, for poor Jack’s third an’ last chance the King 
took him to show him a wondherful field of beans he 
had, with every bean-stalk fifteen feet high, an’ every 
bean the size of a goose’s egg. 

“ Well, Jack,” says the King, says he, “ I ’ll engage 
ye never saw more wondherful bean-stalks than them? ” 

“ Is it them? ” says Jack. “ Arrah, man yer King- 
ship,” says he, “ they may be very good — for this 
counthry; but sure we’d throw them out of the ground 
for useless afther-shoots in Donegal. I mind one 
bean-stalk in partickler, that my father had for a 
show an’ a cur’osity, that he used to show as a great 
wondher entirely to sthrangers. It stood on ninety- 
nine acres of ground, it was nine hundred mile high, 


298 JACK AND THE KING 

an’ every leaf covered nine acres. It fed nine thou¬ 
sand horses, nine thousand mules, an’ nine thousand 
jackasses for nineteen years. He used to send nine 
thousand harvestmen up the stalk in the spring to cut 
and gather off the soft branches at the top. They 
used to cut these off when they’d reach up as far as 
them (which was always in the harvest time), an’ 
throw them down, an’ nine hundred and ninety-nine 
horses an’ carts were kept busy for nine months cart¬ 
ing the stuff away. Then the harvestmen always 
reached down to the foot of the stalk at Christmas 
again.” 

“ Faix, Jack,” says the King, “ it was a wondher- 
ful bean-stalk, that, entirely.” 

“ You might say that,” says Jack, trying to make 
the most of it, for he was now on his last leg. “ You 
might say that,” says he. “ Why, I mind one year 
I went up the stalk with the harvestmen, an’ when I 
was nine thousand mile up, does n’t I miss my foot, 
and down I come. I fell feet foremost, and sunk up 
to my chin in a whinstone rock that was at the foot. 
There I was in a quandhary — but I was not long 
ruminatin’ till I hauled out my knife, an’ cut off my 
head, an’ sent it home to look for help. I watched 
after it, as it went away, an’ lo an’ behould ye, afore 
it had gone a mile I saw a fox set on it, and begin 


JACK AND THE KING 299 

to worry it. ‘ By this an’ by that/ says I to meself, 
‘but this is too bad!’—an’ I jumped out an’ away 
as hard as I could run, to the assistance of my head. 
An’ when I come up, I lifted my foot an’ give the 
fox three kicks, an’ knocked three kings out of him 
— every one of them a nicer an’ a better jintleman 
than you.” 

“ Ye ’re a liar, an’ a rascally liar,” says the King. 

“ More power to ye! ” says Jack, givin’ three buck 
leaps clean into the air, “ an’ it’s proud I am to get you 
to confess it; for I have won yer daughter.” 

Right enough the King had to give up to Jack 
the daughter — an’ be the same token, from the first 
time she clapped her two eyes on Jack she was n’t the 
girl to gainsay him — an’ her weight in goold. An’ 
they were both of them marrid, an’ had such a weddin’ 
as surpassed all the weddin’s ever was heerd tell of 
afore or since in that country or in this. An’ Jack 
lost no time in sendin’ for his poor ould mother, an’ 
neither herself nor Jack ever after knew what it was 
to be in want. An’ may you an’ I never know that 
same naither. 







XI 

BILLY’S TENDERFOOT 


By Stewart Edward White 


XI 


BILLY’S TENDERFOOT 

D URING one spring of the early seventies Billy 
Knapp ran a species of road-house and hotel 
at the crossing of the Deadwood and Big Horn trails 
through Custer Valley. Travellers changing from 
one to the other frequently stopped there over night. 
He sold accommodations for man and beast, the 
former comprising plenty of whiskey, the latter 
plenty of hay. That was the best anyone could say 
of it. The hotel was of logs, two-storied, with parti¬ 
tions of sheeting to insure a certain privacy of sight 
if not of sound; had three beds and a number of 
bunks; and boasted of a woman cook — one of the 
first in the Hills. Billy did not run it long. He was 
too restless. For the time being, however, he was 
interested and satisfied. 

The personnel of the establishment consisted of 
Billy and the woman, already mentioned, and an an¬ 
cient Pistol of the name of Charley. The latter wore 

From “Blazed Trail Stories,” copyright, 1904, by Doubleday, 
Page & Company. By special permission from the author. 

303 


304 


BILLY’S TENDERFOOT 


many firearms, and had a good deal to say, but had 
never, as Billy expressed it, “ made good.” This in 
the West could not be for lack of opportunity. His 
functions were those of general factotum. 

One evening Billy sat chair-tilted against the walls 
of the hotel waiting for the stage. By and by it 
drew in. Charley hobbled out, carrying buckets of 
water for the horses. The driver flung the reins 
from him with the lordly insolence of his privileged 
class, descended slowly, and swaggered to the bar¬ 
room for his drink. Billy followed to serve it. 

“ Luck,” said the driver, and crooked his elbow. 

“ Anything new?” queried Billy. 

“ Nope.” 

“ Held up?” 

“ Nope. Black Hank’s over in th’ limestone.” 

That exhausted the situation. The two men puffed 
silently for a moment at their pipes. In an instant 
the driver turned to go. 

“ I got you a tenderfoot,” he remarked then, 
casually; “ I reckon he’s outside.” 

“ Guess I ambles forth and sees what fer a tender¬ 
foot it is,” replied Billy, hastening from behind the 
bar. 

The tenderfoot was seated on a small trunk just 
outside the door. As he held his hat in his hand, 


BILLY’S TENDERFOOT 


305 


Billy could see his dome-like bald head. Beneath the 
dome was a little pink-and-white face, and below that 
narrow, sloping shoulders, a flat chest, and bandy legs. 
He wore a light check suit, and a flannel shirt whose 
collar was much too large for him. Billy took this 
all in while passing. As the driver climbed to the 
seat, the hotel-keeper commented. 

" Say, Hen,” said he, “ would you stuff it or put 
it under a glass case? ” 

“ I’d serve it, a lay Tooloose,” replied the driver, 
briefly, and brought his long lash 8-shaped across 
the four startled backs of his horses. 

Billy turned to the reinspection of his guest, and 
met a deprecating smile. 

“ Can I get a room here fer to-night? ” he inquired 
in a high, piping voice. 

“ You kin,” said Billy, shortly, and began to howl 
for Charley. 

That patriarch appeared around the corner, as did 
likewise the cook, a black-eyed, red-cheeked creature, 
afterward counted by Billy as one of his eight mat¬ 
rimonial ventures. 

“ Snake this stranger’s war-bag into th’ shack,” 
commanded Billy, “ and, Nell, jest nat’rally rustle a 
few grub.” 

The stranger picked up a small hand-satchel and 


BILLY’S TENDERFOOT 


306 

followed Charley into the building. When, a little 
later, he reappeared for supper, he carried the hand¬ 
bag with him, and placed it under the bench which 
flanked the table. Afterward he deposited it near 
his hand while enjoying a pipe outside. Naturally, 
all this did not escape Billy. 

“ Stranger,” said he, “ yo’ seems mighty wedded 
to that thar satchel.” 

“ Yes, sir,” piped the stranger. Billy snorted at 
the title. “ I has some personal belongin’s which is 
valuable to me.” He opened the bag and produced a 
cheap portrait of a rather cheap-looking woman. “ My 
mother that was,” said he. 

Billy snorted again and went inside. He hated 
sentiment of all kinds. 

The two men sat opposite each other and ate sup¬ 
per, which was served by the red-cheeked girl. The 
stranger kept his eyes on his plate while she was in 
the room. He perched on the edge of the bench with 
his feet tucked under him' and resting on the toes. 
When she approached, the muscles of his shoulders 
and upper arms grew rigid with embarrassment, 
causing strange awkward movements of the hands. 
He answered in monosyllables. 

Billy ate expansively and earnestly. Toward the 
close of the meal Charley slipped into place beside 


BILLY’S TENDERFOOT 


307 

him. Charley was out of humor, and found the meat 
cold. 

“ Damn yore soul, Nell,” he cried, “ this yere ain’t 
fitten fer a hog to eat! ” 

The girl did not mind; nor did Billy. It was the 
country’s mode of speech. The stranger dropped his 
knife. 

" I don’t wonder you don’t like it, then,” said he, 
with a funny little blaze of anger. 

“ Meanin’ what?” shouted Charley, threateningly. 

‘‘You mustn’t speak to a lady that way,” replied 
the stranger, firmly, in his little piping voice. 

Billy caught the point and exploded in a mighty 
guffaw. 

<c Bully fer you!” he cried, slapping his knee; 
“ struck pyrites (he pronounced it pie-rights) fer 
shore that trip, Charley.” 

The girl, too, laughed, but quietly. She was just 
a little touched, though only this winter she had left 
Bismarck because the place would have no more of 
her. 

In the face of Billy’s approval, the patriarch fell 
silent. 

About midnight the four inmates of the frontier 
hotel were awakened by a tremendous racket outside. 
The stranger arose, fully clothed, from his bunk, and 


BILLY’S TENDERFOOT 


308 

peered through the narrow open window. A dozen 
horses were standing grouped in charge of a single 
mounted man, indistinguishable in the dark. Out of 
the open door a broad band of light streamed from 
the saloon, whence came the noise of voices and of 
boots tramping about. 

“ It is Black Hank,” said Billy, at his elbow, 
“ Black Hank and his outfit. He hitches to this yere 
snubbin’-post occasional.” 

Black Hank in the Hills would have translated to 
Jesse James farther south. 

The stranger turned suddenly energetic. 

“Don’t you make no fight?” he asked. 

“Fight?” said Billy, wondering. “Fight? Co’se 
not. Hank don’t plunder me none. He jest ambles 
along an’ helps himself, and leaves th’ dust fer it 
every time. I jest lays low an’ lets him operate. I 
never has no dealin’s with him, understand. He jest 
nat’rally waltzes in an’ plants his grub-hooks on what 
he needs. I don’t know nothin’ about it. I’m dead 
asleep.” 

He bestowed a shadowy wink on the stranger. 

Below, the outlaws moved here and there. 

“Billy!” shouted a commanding voice, “Billy 
Knapp!” 

The hotel-keeper looked perplexed. 


BILLY’S TENDERFOOT 


309 

“ Now, what’s he tollin’ me for? ” he asked of the 
man by his side. 

“ Billy! ” shouted the voice again, “ come down 
here, you Siwash. I want to palaver with you.” 

“ All right, Hank,” replied Billy. 

He went to his “ room,” and buckled on a heavy 
belt; then descended the steep stairs. The barroom 
was lighted and filled with men. Some of them were 
drinking and eating; others were strapping provisions 
into portable form. Against the corner of the bar 
a tall figure of a man leaned smoking — a man lithe, 
active, and muscular, with a keen dark face, and black 
eyebrows which met over his nose. Billy walked 
silently to this man. 

“ What is it ? ” he asked, shortly. “ This yere 
ain’t in th’ agreement.” 

“ I know that,” replied the stranger. 

“ Then leave yore dust and vamoose.” 

“ My dust is there,” replied Black Hank, placing 
his hand on a buckskin bag at his side, “ and you ’re 
paid, Billy Knapp. I want to ask you a question. 
Standing Rock has sent fifty thousand dollars in 
greenbacks to Spotted Tail. The messenger went 
through here to-day. Have you seen him?” 

“ Nary messenger,” replied Billy, in relief. “ Stage 
goes empty.” 


3 io BILLY’S TENDERFOOT 

Charley had crept down the stairs and into the 
room. 

“ What in hell are yo’ doin’ yere, yo’ ranikaboo 
ijit?” inquired Billy, truculently. 

“ That thar stage ain’t what you calls empty,” 
observed Charley, unmoved. 

A light broke on Billy’s mind. He remarked the 
valise which the stranger had so carefully guarded; 
and though his common-sense told him that an in¬ 
offensive non-combatant such as the guest would 
hardly be chosen as express messenger, still the bare 
possibility remained. 

“ Yo ’re right,” he agreed, carelessly, “ thar is one 
tenderfoot who knows as much of ridin’ express as 
a pig does of a ruffled shirt.” 

“ I notes he’s almighty particular about that car- 
pet-bag of his’n,” insisted Charley. 

The man against the counter had lost nothing of 
the scene. Billy’s denial, his hesitation, his half- 
truth all looked suspicious to him. With one swift, 
round sweep of the arm he had Billy covered. 
Billy’s hands shot over his head without the neces¬ 
sity of command. 

The men ceased their occupations and gathered 
about. Scenes of this sort were too common to elicit 
comment or arouse excitement. They knew perfectly 


BILLY’S TENDERFOOT 


3“ 

well the laissez-faire relations which obtained be¬ 
tween the two Westerners. 

“ Now,” said Black Hank, angrily, in a low tone, 
“ I want to know why in hell you tried that monkey 
game.” 

Billy, wary and unafraid, replied that he had tried 
no game, that he had forgotten the tenderfoot for 
the moment, and that he did not believe the latter 
would prove to be the sought-for express messen¬ 
ger. 

One of the men, at a signal from his leader, re¬ 
lieved Billy’s heavy belt of considerable weight. Then 
the latter was permitted to sit on a cracker-box. Two 
more mounted the stairs. In a moment they returned 
to report that the upper story contained no human 
beings, strange or otherwise, except the girl, but that 
there remained a small trunk. Under further orders, 
they dragged the trunk down into the barroom. It 
was broken open and found to contain nothing but 
clothes — of the plainsman’s cut, material, and state 
of wear; a neatly folded Mexican saddle showing use, 
and a rawhide quirt. 

“ Hell of a tenderfoot!” said Black Hank, con¬ 
temptuously. 

The outlaws had already scattered outside to look 
for the trail. In this they were unsuccessful, report- 


312 


BILLY’S TENDERFOOT 


ing, indeed, that not the faintest sign indicated es¬ 
cape in any direction. 

Billy knew his man. The tightening of Black 
Hank’s close-knit brows meant but one thing. One 
does not gain chieftainship of any kind in the West 
without propping his ascendency with acts of ruth¬ 
less decision. Billy leaped from his cracker-box with 
the suddenness of the puma, seized Black Hank firmly 
about the waist, whirled him into a sort of shield, and 
began an earnest struggle for the instant possession 
of the outlaw’s drawn revolver. It was a gallant 
attempt, but an unsuccessful one. In a moment Billy 
was pinioned to the floor, and Black Hank was rub¬ 
bing hi's abraded forearm. After that the only ques¬ 
tion was whether it should be rope or bullet. 

Now, when Billy had gone downstairs, the stranger 
had wasted no further time at the window. He had 
in his possession fifty thousand dollars in greenbacks 
which he was to deliver as soon as possible to the 
Spotted Tail agency in Wyoming. The necessary 
change of stage lines had forced him to stay over night 
at Billy Knapp’s hotel. 

The messenger seized his bag and softly ran along 
through the canvas-partitioned room wherein Billy 
slept, to a narrow window which he had already no¬ 
ticed gave out almost directly into the pine woods. 


BILLY’S TENDERFOOT 


3i3 

The window was of oiled paper, and its catch baffled 
him. He knew it should slide back; but it refused to 
slide. He did not dare break the paper because of 
the crackling noise. A voice at his shoulder startled 
him. 

“ I ’ll show you,” whispered the red-cheeked girl. 

She was wrapped loosely in a blanket, her hair fall¬ 
ing about her shoulders, and her bare feet showed 
beneath her coverings. 

The little man suffered at once an agony of em¬ 
barrassment in which the thought of his errand was 
lost. It was recalled to him by the girl. 

“ There you are,” she whispered, showing him the 
open window. 

“ Thank you,” he stammered painfully. “ I assure 
you — I wish —” 

The girl laughed under her breath. 

“ That’s all right,” she said, heartily, “ I owe you 
that for calling old whiskers off his bronc,” and she 
kissed him. 

The messenger, trembling with self-consciousness, 
climbed hastily through the window, ran the broad 
loop of the satchel up his arm, instead of dropping to 
the ground, as the girl had expected, and swung himself 
lightly into the branches of a rather large scrub-oak 
that grew near. She listened to the rustle of the 


BILLY’S TENDERFOOT 


3i4 

leaves for a moment as he neared the trunk, and then, 
unable to restrain her curiosity in regard to the doings 
below, turned to the stairway. 

As she did so, two men mounted. They examined 
the three rooms of the upper story hastily but care¬ 
fully, paying scant attention to her, and departed 
swearing. In a few moments they returned for the 
stranger’s trunk. Nell followed them down the stairs 
as far as the doorway. There she heard and saw 
things, and fled in bitter dismay to the back of the 
house when Billy Knapp was overpowered. 

At the window she knelt, clasping her hands and 
sinking her head between her arms. Women in the 
West, at least women like Nell, do not weep. But 
she came near it. Suddenly she raised her head. A 
voice next her ear had addressed her. 

She looked here and there and around, but could 
discover nothing. 

“ Here, outside,” came the low, guarded voice, “ in 
the tree.” 

Then she saw that the little stranger had not stirred 
from his first alighting-place. 

" Beg yore pardon, ma’am, fer startling you or fer 
addressing you at all, which I should n’t, but —” 

“ Oh, never mind that,” said the girl, impatiently, 
shaking back her hair. So deprecating and timid 


BILLY’S TENDERFOOT 


315 

were t?he tones, that almost without an effort of the 
imagination she could picture the little man’s blushes 
and his half-sidling method of delivery. At this su¬ 
preme moment his littleness and lack of self-assertion 
jarred on her mood. “ What’re you doin’ there? 
Thought you’d vamoosed.” 

“ It was safer here,” explained the stranger, “ I 
left no trail.” 

She nodded comprehension of the common-sense of 
this. 

“ But, ma’am, I took the liberty of speakin’ to you 
because you seems to be in trouble. Of course, I ain’t 
got no right to ask, an’ if you don’t care to tell me —” 

“ They ’re goin’ to kill Billy,” broke in Nell, with 
a sob. 

“ What for?” 

“ I don’t just rightly make out. They’s after 
someone, and they thinks Billy’s caching him. I 
reckon it’s you. Billy ain’t caching nothin’, but 
they thinks he is.” 

“ It’s me they’s after, all right. Now, you know 
where I am, why don’t you tell them and save Billy? ” 

The girl started, but her keen Western mind saw 
the difficulty at once. 

“ They thinks Billy pertects you just th’ same.” 

“ Do you love him ? ” asked the stranger. 


BILLY’S TENDERFOOT 


316 

“ God knows I’m purty tough/’ confessed Nell, 
sobbing, “ but I jest do that! ” and she dropped her 
head again. 

The invisible stranger in the gloom fell silent, con¬ 
sidering. 

“ I’m a pretty rank proposition, myself,” said he 
at last, as if to himself, “ and I’ve got a job on hand 
which same I oughta put through without givin’ at¬ 
tention to anything else. As a usual thing folks don’t 
care fer me, and I don’t care much fer folks. Women 
especial. They drives me plumb tired. I reckon I 
don’t stack up very high in th’ blue chips when it 
comes to cashin’ in with the gentle sex, anyhow; but 
in general they gives me as much notice as they lavishes 
on a doodle-bug. I ain’t kickin’, you understand, nary 
bit; but onct in a dog’s age I kind of hankers fer a 
decent look from one of ’em. I ain’t never had no 
women-folks of my own, never. Sometimes I thinks 
it would be some scrumptious to know a little gal 
waitin’ fer me somewhere. They ain’t none. They 
never will be. I ain’t built that way. You treated 
me white to-night. You ’re th’ first woman that ever 
kissed me of her own accord.” 

The girl heard a faint scramble, then the soft pat 
of someone landing on his feet. Peering from the 
window she made out a faint, shadowy form stealing 


BILLY’S TENDERFOOT 


3 T 7 

around the corner of the hotel. She put her hand to 
her heart and listened. Her understanding of the 
stranger’s motives was vague at best, but she had 
caught his confession that her kiss had meant much 
to him, and even in her anxiety she felt an inclination 
to laugh. She had bestowed that caress as she would 
have kissed the cold end of a dog’s nose. 

The men below stairs had, after some discussion, 
decided on bullet. This was out of consideration for 
Billy’s standing as a frontiersman. Besides, he had 
stolen no horses. In order not to delay matters, the 
execution was fixed for the present time and place. 
Billy stood with his back to the logs of his own hotel, 
his hands and feet bound, but his eyes uncovered. 
He had never lost his nerve. In the short respite 
which preparation demanded, he told his opponents 
what he thought of them. 

“ Proud? ” he concluded a long soliloquy as if to the 
reflector of the lamp. “Proud?” he repeated reflec¬ 
tively. “ This yere Hank’s jest that proud he’s all 
swelled up like a poisoned pup. Ain’t everyone kin 
corail a man sleepin’ and git fifty thousand without 
turnin’ a hair.” 

Black Hank distributed three men to do the busi¬ 
ness. There were no heroics. The execution of this 
man was necessary to him, not because he was par- 


BILLY’S TENDERFOOT 


3i8 

ticularly angry over the escape of the messenger — he 
expected to capture that individual in due time — but 
in order to preserve his authority over his men. He 
was in the act of moving back to give the shooters 
room, when he heard behind him the door open and 
shut. 

He turned. Before the door stood a small con¬ 
sumptive-looking man in a light check suit. The 
tenderfoot carried two short-barreled Colt’s revolvers, 
one of which he presented directly at Black Hank. 

“ ’Nds up! ” he commanded, sharply. 

Hank was directly covered, so he obeyed. The 
new-comer’s eye had a strangely restless quality. Of 
the other dozen inmates of the room, eleven were 
firmly convinced that the weapon and eye not directly 
levelled at their leader were personally concerned with 
themselves. The twelfth thought he saw his chance. 
To the bewildered onlookers there seemed to be a 
flash and a bang, instantaneous; then things were as 
before. One of the stranger’s weapons still pointed 
at Black Hank’s breast; the other at each of the rest. 

Only the twelfth man, he who had seen his chance, 
had collapsed forward to the floor. No one could 
assure himself positively that he had discerned the 
slightest motion on the part of the stranger. 

“ Now,” said the latter, sharply, “ one at a time, 


BILLY’S TENDERFOOT 


3i9 

gentlemen. Drop yore gun,” this last to Black 
Hank, “ muzzle down. Drop it! Correct! ” 

One of the men in the back of the room stirred 
slightly on the ball of his foot. 

“ Steady, there! ” warned the stranger. The man 
stiffened. 

“ Next gent,” went on the little man, subtly indicat¬ 
ing another. The latter obeyed without hesitation. 
“ Next. Now you. Now you in th’ corner.” 

One after another the pistols clattered to the floor. 
Not for an instant could a single inmate of the apart¬ 
ment, armed or unarmed, flatter himself that his slight¬ 
est motion was unobserved. They were like tigers 
on the crouch, ready to spring the moment the man’s 
guard lowered. It did not lower. The huddled fig¬ 
ure on the floor reminded them of what might happen. 
They obeyed. 

“ Step back,” commanded the stranger next. In a 
moment he had them standing in a row against the 
wall, rigid, upright, their hands over their heads. 
Then for the first time the stranger moved from his 
position by the door. 

“ Call her,” he said to Billy, “ th’ girl.” 

Billy raised his voice. “ Nell! Oh, Nell! ” 

In a moment she appeared in the doorway at the 
foot of the stairs, without hesitation or fear. When 


320 BILLY’S TENDERFOOT 

she perceived the state of affairs, she brightened al¬ 
most mischievously. 

“ Would you jest as soon, ma’am, if it ain’t trou¬ 
bling you too much, jest nat’rally sort of untie Billy? ” 
requested the stranger. 

She did so. The hotel-keeper stretched his arms. 

“ Now, pick up th’ guns, please.” 

The two set about it. 

“ Where’s that damn ol’ reprobate ? ” inquired 
Billy, truculently, looking about for Charley. 

The patriarch had quietly slipped away. 

“ You kin drop them hands,” advised the stranger, 
lowering the muzzles of his weapons. The leader 
started to say something. 

“ You shut up! ” said Billy, selecting his own 
weapons from the heap. 

The stranger suddenly picked up one of the Colt’s 
single-action revolvers which lay on the floor, and, 
holding the trigger back against the guard, exploded 
the six charges by hitting the hammer smartly with 
the palm of his hand. In the thrusting motion of 
this discharge he evidently had design, for the first 
six wine-glasses on Billy’s bar were shivered. It 
was wonderful work, rattling fire, quicker than a self- 
cocker even. He selected another weapon. From a 
pile of tomato-cans he took one and tossed it into 


BILLY’S TENDERFOOT 


321 


the air. Before it had fallen he had perforated it 
twice, and as it rolled along the floor he helped its 
progression by four more bullets which left streams 
of tomato-juice where they had hit. The room was 
full of smoke. 

The group watched, fascinated. 

Then the men against the wall grew rigid. Out 
of the film of smoke long, vivid streams of fire flashed 
toward them, now right, now left, like the alternating 
steam of a locomotive’s pistons. SMASH, SMASH! 
SMASH, SMASH! hit the bullets with regular thud. 
With the twelfth discharge the din ceased. Midway 
in the space between the heads of each pair of men 
against the wall wasr a round hole. No one was 
touched. 

A silence fell. The smoke lightened and blew 
slowly through the open door. The horses, long 
since deserted by their guardians in favor of the ex¬ 
citement within, whinnied. The stranger dropped 
the smoking Colts, and quietly reproduced his own 
short-barrelled arms from his side-pockets, where he 
had thrust them. Billy broke the silence at last. 

“That’s shootiri!” he observed, with a sigh. 

“ Them fifty thousand is outside,” clicked the 
stranger. “ Do you want them? ” 

There was no reply. 


3 22 


BILLY’S TENDERFOOT 


“ I aims to pull out on one of these-yere hosses 
of yours,” said he. “ Billy he’s all straight. He 
does n’t know nothin’ about me.” 

He collected the six-shooters from the floor. 

“ I jest takes these with me for a spell,” he con¬ 
tinued. “ You ’ll find them, if you look hard enough, 
along on th’ trail — also yore broncs.” 

He backed toward the door. 

“ I’m layin’ fer th’ man that sticks his head out that 
door,” he warned. 

“ Stranger,” said Black Hank as he neared the door. 

The little man paused. 

“ Might I ask yore name ? ” 

“ My name is Alfred,” replied the latter. 

Black Hank looked chagrined. 

“ I ’ve hearn tell of you,” he acknowledged. 

The stranger’s eye ran over the room, and encoun¬ 
tered that of the girl. He shrank into himself and 
blushed. 

“ Good-night,” he said, hastily, and disappeared. A 
moment later the beat of hoofs became audible as he 
led the bunch of horses away. 

For a time there was silence. Then Billy, “ By 
God, Hank, I means to stand in with you, but you 
let that kid alone, or I plugs you! ” 


BILLY’S TENDERFOOT 


323 

“ Kid, huh!” grunted Hank. “Alfred a kid! 
I’ve hearn tell of him.” 

“ What’ve you heard ? ” inquired the girl. 

“ He ’s th’ plumb best scout on th’ southern trail,” 
replied Black Hank. 

The year following, Billy Knapp, Alfred, and an¬ 
other man named Jim Buckley took across to the hills 
the only wagon-train that dared set out that summer. 



THE NIGHTINGALE AND THE ROSE 


By Oscar Wilde 










XII 


THE NIGHTINGALE AND THE ROSE 

S HE said that she would dance with me if I brought 
her red roses,” cried the young Student; “ but 
in all my garden there is no red rose.” 

From her nest in the Holm-oak tree the Nightingale 
heard him, and she looked out through the leaves, and 
wondered. 

“ No red rose in all my garden! ” he cried, and 
his beautiful eyes filled with tears. “ Ah, on what 
little things does happiness depend. I have read all 
the wise men have written and all the secrets of 
philosophy are mine, yet for want of a red rose is my 
life made wretched. ,, 

“ Here at last is a true lover,” said the Nightin¬ 
gale. “ Night after night have I sung of him, though 
I knew him not; night after night have I told his story 
to the stars, and now I see him. His hair is dark 
as the hyacinth-blossom, and his lips as red as the 
rose of his desire; but passion has made his face like 

From “ Fairy Tales,” copyright, 1913, by G. P. Putnam’s Sons. 
By special permission from the publishers. 

327 


328 THE NIGHTINGALE AND THE ROSE 

pale ivory, and sorrow has set her seal upon his brow/’ 

“ The Prince gives a ball to-morrow night,” mur¬ 
mured the young Student, “ and my love will be of 
the company. If I bring her a red rose, I shall hold 
her in my arms, and she will lean her head upon my 
shoulder, and her hand will be clasped in mine. But 
there is no red rose in my garden, so I shall sit lonely, 
and she will pass me by. She will have no heed of me, 
and my heart will break.” 

“ Here indeed is the true lover,” said the Night¬ 
ingale. “What I sing of, he suffers; what is joy to 
me, to him is pain. Surely Love is a wonderful thing. 
It is more precious than emeralds, and dearer than 
fine opals. Pearls and pomegranates cannot buy it, 
nor is it set forth in the market-place. It may not 
be purchased of the merchants, nor can it be weighed 
out in the balance for gold.” 

“ The musicians will sit in their gallery,” said the 
young Student, “ and play upon their stringed instru¬ 
ments, and my love will dance to the sound of the 
harp and violin. She will dance so lightly that her 
feet will not touch the floor, and the courtiers in their 
gay dresses will throng round her. But with me she 
will not dance, for I have no red rose to give her ”; 
and he flung himself down on the grass, and buried 
his face in his hands, and wept. 


THE NIGHTINGALE AND THE ROSE 329 

“ Why is he weeping? ” asked a little Green Lizard, 
as he ran past him with his tail in the air. 

“ Why, indeed? ” said a Butterfly, who was flutter¬ 
ing after a sunbeam. 

“ Why, indeed?” whispered a Daisy to his neigh¬ 
bor, in a soft low voice. 

“ He is weeping for a red rose,” said the Night¬ 
ingale. 

“ For a red rose! ” they cried; “ how very ridicu¬ 
lous! ” and the Lizard, who was something of a cynic, 
laughed outright. 

But the Nightingale understood the secret of the 
Student’s sorrow, and she sat silent in the Oak-tree, 
and thought about the mystery of love. 

Suddenly she spread her brown wings for flight 
and soared into the air. She passed through the grove 
like a shadow, and like a shadow she sailed across 
the garden. 

In the center of the grass-plot was standing a beau¬ 
tiful Rose-tree, and when she saw it she flew over to 
it, and lit upon a spray. 

“ Give me a red rose,” she cried, " and I will sing 
you my sweetest song.” 

But the Tree shook its head. 

“ My roses are white,” it answered; “ as white as 
the foam of the sea and whiter than the snow upon 


330 THE NIGHTINGALE AND THE ROSE 

the mountain. But go to my brother who grows 
round the sun-dial, and perhaps he will give you what 
you want.” 

So the Nightingale flew over to the Rose-tree that 
was growing round the old sun-dial. 

“ Give me a red rose,” she cried, “ and I will sing 
you my sweetest song.” 

But the Tree shook its head. 

“ My roses are yellow,” it answered; “ as yellow 
as the hair of the mermaiden who sits upon an amber 
throne, and yellower than the daffodil that blooms in 
the meadow before the mower comes with his scythe. 
But go to my brother who grows beneath the Student’s 
window, and perhaps he will give you what you want.” 

So the Nightingale flew over to the Rose-tree that 
was growing beneath the Student’s window. 

“ Give me a red rose,” she cried, “ and I will sing 
you my sweetest song.” 

But the Tree shook its head. 

“ My roses are red,” it answered, “ as red as the 
feet of the dove, and redder than the great fans of 
coral that wave and wave in the ocean-cavern. But 
the winter has chilled my veins, and the frost has 
nipped my buds, and the storm has broken my 
branches, and I shall have no roses at all this year.” 

“ One red rose is all I want,” cried the Nightingale, 


THE NIGHTINGALE AND THE ROSE 331 

“ only one red rose! Is there no way by which I 
can get it ? ” 

“There is a way,” answered the Tree; “but it is 
so terrible that I dare not tell it to you.” 

“Tell it to me,” said the Nightingale; “I am not 
afraid.” 

“If you want a red rose,” said the Tree, “ you must 
build it out of music by moonlight, and stain it with 
your own heart’s-blood. You must sing to me with 
your breast against a thorn. All night long you must 
sing to me, and the thorn must pierce your heart, and 
your life-blood must flow into my veins, and become 
mine.” 

“ Death is a great price to pay for a red rose,” 
cried the Nightingale, “ and Life is very dear to all. 
It is pleasant to sit in the green wood, and to watch 
the Sun in his chariot of gold, and the Moon in her 
chariot of pearl. Sweet is the scent of the haw¬ 
thorn, and sweet are the bluebells that hide in the 
valley, and the heather that blows on the hill. Yet 
Love is better than Life, and what is the heart of a 
bird compared to the heart of a man?” 

So she spread her brown wings for flight, and soared 
into the air. She swept over the garden like a 
shadow, and like a shadow she sailed through the 
grove. 


332 THE NIGHTINGALE AND THE ROSE 

The young Student was still lying on the grass, 
where she had left him, and the tears were not yet 
dry in his beautiful eyes. 

“ Be happy,” cried the Nightingale, “ be happy; 
you shall have your red rose. I will build it out 
of music by moonlight, and stain it with my own 
heart’s-blood. All that I ask of you in return is that 
you will be a true lover, for Love is wiser than 
Philosophy, though she is wise, and mightier than 
Power, though he is mighty. Flame-colored are his 
wings, and colored like flame is his body. His lips 
are sweet as honey, and his breath is like frankin- 
cense. ,, 

The Student looked up from the grass, and listened, 
but he could not understand what the Nightingale 
was saying to him, for he only knew the things that 
are written down in books. 

But the Oak-tree understood, and felt sad, for he 
was very fond of the little Nightingale, who had built 
her nest in his branches. 

“ Sing me one last song,” he whispered; “ I shall 
feel very lonely when you are gone.” 

So the Nightingale sang to the Oak-tree, and her 
voice was like water bubbling from a silver jar. 

When she had finished her song, the Student got 


THE NIGHTINGALE AND THE ROSE 333 

up, and pulled a note-book and a lead-pencil out of 
his pocket. 

“ She has form,” he said to himself, as he walked 
away through the grove —“ that cannot be denied to 
her; but has she got feeling? I am afraid not. In 
fact, she is like most artists; «she is all style, without 
any sincerity. She would not sacrifice herself for 
others. She thinks merely of music, and everybody 
knows that the arts are selfish. Still, it must be ad¬ 
mitted that she has some beautiful notes in her voice. 
What a pity it is that they do not mean anything, or 
do any practical good.” And he went into his room, 
and lay down on his little pallet-bed, and began to 
think of his love; and, after a time, he fell asleep. 

And when the Moon shone in the heavens the 
Nightingale flew to the Rose-tree, and set her breast 
against the thorn. All night long she sang with her 
breast against the thorn, and the cold crystal Moon 
leaned down and listened. All night long she sang, 
and the thorn went deeper and deeper into her breast, 
and her life blood ebbed away from her. 

She sang first of the birth of love in the heart of 
a boy and girl. And on the topmost spray of the 
Rose-tree there blossomed a marvellous rose, petal 
following petal, as song followed song. Pale was it, 


334 THE NIGHTINGALE AND THE ROSE 

at first, as the mist that hangs over the river — pale 
as the feet of the morning, and silver as the wings 
of the dawn. As the shadow of a rose in a mirror 
of silver, as the shadow of a rose in a water-pool, so 
was the rose that blossomed on the topmost spray of 
the Tree. 

But the Tree cried to the Nightingale to press closer 
against the thorn. “ Press closer, little Nightingale,” 
cried the Tree, “ or the Day will come before the 
rose is finished.” 

So the Nightingale pressed closer against the thorn, 
and louder and louder grew her song, for she sang 
of the birth of passion in the soul of a man and a 
maid. 

And a delicate flush of pink came into the leaves 
of the rose, like the flush in the face of the bridegroom 
when he kisses the lips of the bride. But the thorn 
had not yet reached her heart, so the rose’s heart re¬ 
mained white, for only a Nightingale’s heart-blood 
can crimson the heart of a rose. 

And the Tree cried to the Nightingale to press 
closer against the thorn. “ Press closer, little Night¬ 
ingale,” cried the Tree, “ or the Day will come before 
the rose is finished.” 

So the Nightingale pressed closer against the thorn, 
and the thorn touched her heart, and a fierce pang of 


THE NIGHTINGALE AND THE ROSE 335 

pain shot through her. Bitter, bitter was the pain, 
and wilder and wilder grew her song, for she sang 
of the Love that is perfected by Death, of the Love 
that dies not in the tomb. 

And the marvellous rose became crimson, like the 
rose of the eastern sky. Crimson was the girdle of 
petals, and crimson as a ruby was the heart. 

But the Nightingale's voice grew fainter, and her 
little wings began to beat, and a film came over her 
eyes. Fainter and fainter grew her song, and she 
felt something choking her in her throat. 

Then she gave one last burst of music. The white 
Moon heard it, and she forgot the dawn, and lingered 
on in the sky. The red rose heard it, and it trembled 
all over with ecstasy, and opened its petals to the cold 
morning air. Echo bore it to her purple cavern in the 
hills, and woke the sleeping shepherds from their 
dreams. It floated through the reeds of the river, and 
they carried its message to the sea. 

“ Look, look! ” cried the Tree, “ the rose is finished 
now"; but the Nightingale made no answer, for she 
was lying dead in the long grass, with the thorn in 
her heart. 

And at noon the Student opened his window and 
looked out. 

“ Why, what a wonderful piece of luck! ” he cried; 


336 THE NIGHTINGALE AND THE ROSE 

“ here is a red rose! I have never seen any rose like 
it in all my life. It is so beautiful that I am sure 
that it has a long Latin name ”; and he leaned down 
and plucked it. 

Then he put on his hat, and ran up to the Profes¬ 
sor’s house with the rose in his hand. 

The daughter of the Professor was sitting in the 
doorway winding blue silk on a reel, and her little 
dog was lying at her feet. 

“ You said that you would dance with me if I 
brought you a red rose,” cried the Student. “ Here 
is the reddest rose in all the world. You will wear 
it to-night next your heart, and as we dance together 
it will tell you how I love you.” 

But the girl frowned. 

“ I am afraid it will not go with my dress,” she 
answered; “ and besides, the Chamberlain’s nephew 
sent me some real jewels, and everybody knows that 
jewels cost far more than flowers.” 

“ Well, upon my word, you are very ungrateful,” 
said the Student angrily; and he threw the rose into 
the street, where it fell into the gutter, and a cart¬ 
wheel went over it. 

“ Ungrateful! ” said the girl. “ I tell you what, 
you are very rude; and after all, who are you ? Only 
a Student. Why, I don’t believe you have even got 


THE NIGHTINGALE AND THE ROSE 337 

silver buckles to your shoes as the Chamberlain’s 
nephew has ”; and she got up from her chair and 
went into the house. 

“ What a silly thing Love is,” said the Student as 
he walked away. “ It is not half as useful as Logic, 
for it does not prove anything, and it is always tell¬ 
ing one of things that are not going to happen, and 
making one believe things that are not true. In fact, 
it is quite unpractical, and, as in this age to be prac¬ 
tical is everything, I shall go back to Philosophy and 
study Metaphysics.” 

So he returned to his room and pulled out a great 
dusty book, and began to read. 









































































































































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